


Non sum qualis eram

by wreckageofstars



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: (The Doctor needed a Rings of Akhaten moment okay?), Adventure, Angst, Character Study, Drama, Family, Gen, Monster of the Week, Post-Episode: s11e07 Kerblam, ambiguously canon, multi-chapter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-04
Updated: 2019-01-10
Packaged: 2019-09-07 09:25:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 36,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16851463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wreckageofstars/pseuds/wreckageofstars
Summary: Shadows are stalking Sheffield and the Doctor is not herself.





	1. i.

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Just as a general advisory, this story does deal peripherally with mental health topics that some people might find distressing (in the background, but still worth mentioning, as it's relevant to the plot - just so no one's surprised!)  
> Enjoy!

[ _I am not as once I was._ ]

\---

 

“Here we are!” The Doctor pushed open the doors to the TARDIS triumphantly, arms swinging, Graham at her heels. It was the sixth attempt, but they were all very politely not mentioning it. “Sheffield! Not,” she peered down at the sonic, still grinning, “ – six hours off from when I picked you up! Must be a new record, that.”

“Closer and closer every time, Doc.”

“And don't you forget it.”

“Wasn't rainin' when we left.” Yaz stepped out of the TARDIS with Ryan to join them, squinting up at the rain clouds gathered in a cluster above them, sporadic drops hitting her cheeks. She didn't love the rain, as a rule, but after a few days so far from home, she couldn't deny it was reassuringly familiar. There hadn't been any weather on Kandoka's moon, she didn't think. Granted, they'd been stuck inside a warehouse for most of that particular adventure, but the brief time they'd spent on its lawn had been mild and comfortable in a way that struck her as suspicious – and she'd spent enough time in artificial environments lately that she thought she was starting to be able to recognize them. Bit cool, that.

“What day is it?” she asked, turning back to the Doctor as Ryan joined the rest of them outside. The fresh air was cool at the back of her throat. “I don't remember.”

“Still Saturday,” the Doctor offered, glancing up at the sky with brief interest. Genuinely cheerful, as always, but a bit – withdrawn, still. If you knew to look for it. They were all still a bit shaken. “What do you think? Want a week at home? I could come back for you next Saturday.”

Her way of offering them space, Yaz thought. Time. The kind she couldn't offer herself.

“Do you just zip ahead to next Saturday, then?” she asked, dodging the question and its implications.

“What? _No_ ,” she protested, leaning against the TARDIS, feigning offense poorly. “Well, maybe. Yeah, I might do, actually,” she admitted, face scrunching sheepishly. “Not a lot to do in the vortex. Used to go off on my own, a bit, but the trouble with getting into trouble on your own is – ”

“ – there's no one there to rescue you?” Ryan grinned.

“It's not as _fun_.”

Graham shuddered, catching up as they walked, in the vague direction of Yaz's flat complex. “We've got very different ideas of fun, Doc.”

“What, you don't enjoy running for your life everywhere we land?”

“ _No_ ,” he said. “Not that I'm not grateful for the adventure, but, still – wouldn't mind a go at Space Venice Beach the next time we take off. No killer robots, no dystopian space capitalism.”

“All of time and space at your fingertips and you want a Venice Beach?” The Doctor paused, face scrunching critically. “You think a _Space Venice Beach_ would be free of dystopian space capitalism?”

“Alright, alright, point taken,” he said good-naturedly. “You all want to come round to ours then? You're more than welcome, Doc, no need to take off ahead if you don't want to.”

“Brilliant,” she said, delighted. Paused. Hmmed. Her face dropped. “The TARDIS needs some repairs, though. That Kerblam projection shouldn't have made it through the shields, technically. Next time, it could be something much nastier.”

“Nastier than that fez?” Yaz heard Ryan mutter, just below earshot. “Not likely.”

“You could always do them later,” Yaz offered, wincing as the rain began to fall more heavily. Thick, cool drops pricked the tops of her cheeks. Odd, she couldn't help but think, even though the thought was paranoid, ridiculous. But she could have sworn it had been sunny and blue when they'd left. “Can we stop by mine first, anyway? I want to pick up my rain coat.”

“Tea at Yaz's _and_ tea at Graham's,” the Doctor beamed, face lifting again. “Best day ever.”

“My days, you are easy to please,” Ryan said fondly.

“That means two different kinds of biscuits! Who wouldn't be excited?”

“Maybe a sandwich, too, if you're lucky,” Graham said. “Or soup, instead. Could do without the rain, to be perfectly honest.”

“Rain is wonderful!” the Doctor protested, walking backwards at her own peril, hands gesturing wildly. Yaz watched carefully, already resigned. “Cyclical water, soaked up from the earth, spat down again from the heavens, it's _remarkable_ – ” She paused, nose scrunching. “To be fair, this rain does smell a bit off, actually.”

“How can rain smell 'off'?” Yaz asked, but the sonic was already out and whirring sharply, cutting through the delicate patter and the rush of wind.

“Metallic,” the Doctor said, sniffing again, a bit dramatically. “You really can't smell it?”

“Just smells like rain to me.”

“Human noses,” she said, shaking her head, but her eyes were glued already to the sonic, frowning. “You've only got access to a tenth of what the world has to offer, olfactorily. It's tragic.” She sniffed again, and the frown deepened. “C'mon, team! I'll gather readings on the way to Yaz's.”

“Oh, no,” she heard Graham mutter behind them as they trekked behind the Doctor, sonic extended in front of her like a beacon. “Not again. Why can't tea ever just be tea?”

“It's probably just factory fumes,” Ryan said. “Nothing to worry about.”

Optimistic, Yaz thought. But knowing their track record, distinctly unlikely. Oh well. At least the slight possibility of a mystery would distract her from the looming inevitability of her return to work on Monday. It got worse every time they came back, that dread sitting in the pit of her stomach, the stark ordinariness of home stretched and dull and banal. Even after the sharp, scarlet shock of everything they'd just experienced.

“Next time I came home, mum was gonna ask me about you,” she mentioned as they walked. More casually than the tension building at the back of her neck was suggesting. “Ask how I knew you. Who you were.”

“Mums are usually like that, in my experience,” the Doctor nodded, distracted, sonic whirring in front of her. Cool, damp breeze ruffled her hair off her face. “I've learned to answer carefully. Been on the wrong end of a slap, a time or two. Or three.”

“Well, that's just it though,” Yaz said. “I – I don't really know what to say to her.” _I don't really know you that well_ , she almost said. It wasn't quite the truth. But it wasn't far from it, either. I _don't understand you_ , maybe. _Even though you've saved my life and shown me the universe_.

She was an alien, in a time-travelling box that was bigger on the inside, with all of space and time at her fingertips. Yaz could almost hear that voice now, guileless, genuinely confused – _what more answer could you possibly need?_

And maybe she didn't, then.

She'd been trying not to think about it too much, was the thing. The Doctor made it so easy not to ask. Big smile, bright eyes, one adventure after the next. No stopping. No questions.

Well. Not 'no questions', not really. But the answers you got were never quite the answers you expected. The Doctor, Yaz thought, more critically than she'd ever felt the need to before, was a master of evasion.

“Will you tell her the truth?” the Doctor asked, eyes on her, suddenly, subtly, more intense. She had been listening, then. Yaz swallowed, the hair on the back of her neck prickling.

“She'd never believe me,” she said, taking a page out of the Doctor's book and stepping around the question.”It sounds mad.”

“I've had friend who've told people before.” A bit of the Doctor's past, dangling, tantalizing. “The truth, I mean.”

“And?” she asked. “How'd it go over?”

The Doctor hmmed, face scrunching. “Honestly? Bit messy, usually. Love you lot, humans – ” She paused to scowl down at the sonic, clearly puzzled. “ – but I don't understand you one bit, sometimes.”

Ryan looked up from his feet, hands shoved casually in his jacket pockets, but his face was sharp with curiosity. “People you've travelled with before, then?”

The Doctor glanced up from the sonic, still frowning slightly. “Yeah,” she said. “What, you didn't think you were the first?”

“Now, see, the magic's gone,” Graham said, deadpan, trailing behind them but eavesdropping without shame. “You're supposed to wait for the third date to let 'em know, Doc.”

“ _Graham_ ,” she shot back over her shoulder, feigning offense. “How d'you mean? We fought a turtle army together, that's proper romance, that is!”

As always, it was frighteningly difficult to tell whether the Doctor was joking or not.

“Where are they, though?” Ryan pressed, plowing forward inelegantly. “Those other people.” He wasn't thoughtless, Yaz knew, a prickle of tension growing between her shoulders. Disrupting the pleasant vibe they'd had going. Team TARDIS, investigating. The Doctor's gaze had returned to the sonic. It wasn't his fault – Yaz remembered from primary school, his practical way of thinking, his fumbling kindness. He wasn't thoughtless. He just wasn't always the best at saying things – delicately. Talking around things the way they ought to be. “You were by yourself when we found you.”

Talking around that glaring fact, for instance, coupled with the unmistakeable fear of loneliness she caught written starkly across the Doctor's face sometimes.

She nudged his side, pointedly, but he only looked down at her, confused.

“Travelling's not for everyone,” the Doctor said simply, not looking up. Avoiding their gazes. “And – it's not forever. You all have lives you'll have to get back to eventually.”

But maybe she couldn't blame him, today. “Do they really do that?” Yaz asked despite herself, swallowing. Incredulous. Gravel and dirt crunching beneath her feet, for the first time in what felt like weeks, distressingly ordinary. “Just – leave all this behind? Go back to normal life? Who could – who could want that?”

The Doctor fixed her gaze ahead, still avoiding their own. She'd come to a halt underneath one of the trees outside Yaz's flat complex, its leaves dull and brown with early fall. “Not always a question of want,” she said, eventually. Reluctantly. “Not always a question of being able to return, either.”

“You mean,” Yaz said, fearing the words and regretting them as they left her tongue. “Sorry, but. You mean they died?”

The Doctor turned back to them and shook her head, wincing slightly. Flexed her hand around the sonic, twice.

“Not often,” she said, breaths thin and tight. “Not if I can help it.” Her tongue darted out to wet her lips, beneath eyes that were dark and earnest. “All of time and space. It's – it can be dangerous. Especially when you're tryin' to help.”

“Woah, woah, hold on, how many though?” Ryan paused to take a breath. Rain sputtered in the momentary silence. “How many have died?”

“ _Ryan_.” Yaz swatted at his arm, swallowing back a sigh as the Doctor's face went utterly, alarmingly smooth.

“If you want to be safe, Ryan Sinclair,” she said, sharp, brittle. “You can stay at home. I've told all of you before.”

“Doc,” Graham started, giving up as she turned on her heel and stalked away. He dropped the conciliatory hand he'd raised. “Really.” He sent a stern look Ryan's way. “Was that necessary?”

“It's a fair question,” he protested. “I trust the Doctor, you know I do. She's our mate. But she's never even mentioned this stuff before.”

“For good reason, it seems to me.”

Ryan looked to her beseechingly. “Yaz?”

Her fingers caught the fraying edge of her coat, soaked through with rain. They were cold now too, aching with damp.

“I have questions,” she admitted, reluctantly. “I've had them right from the start. 'Course I have. But I'm not sure now's the moment.”

“When is the moment, then?” Those dark eyes were oddly intense. “When we're all dead, too?” He swallowed, frowning. Took a physical step away from them. A shaky breath.

Graham's brow crinkled, but he knew better than to step towards him, even though Yaz could see the desire for it smeared across his face. “Alright, mate?”

“Uh, sorry,” he said, quieter. Swallowing again. “Sorry. Didn't – didn't bother me that much, before. Haven't even really thought about it for weeks. I dunno.”

“It's fine to have questions,” Graham said quietly. “Lord knows I have 'em too. But that Doctor of ours is a right gift, and its clear to me she's proper scared of being left on her own. I trust her to keep us safe. And in the meantime,” he said, venturing forward. “Let's try not to give her any ideas like we're planning on jumping ship.”

“I'm not planning on jumping ship,” Ryan protested, following.

“So _say it._ ”

Yaz, shivering, took up the rear behind them, tuning out the mild bickering, comforting in its familiarity and the thin veneer of warmth that always accompanied it. It took real affection, to argue like that. It was a pity the both of them had such a hard time seeing it.

She wrapped her arms around herself and trailed after them, more troubled than she cared to admit. More raindrops spat at her face as she walked, the sky grey and wet. There was no trace of the metal the Doctor claimed to be able to smell, but there was a sort of – static in the air, she thought. The way it got before a storm, though this light drizzle was far from anything so dramatic.

They'd been back on Earth for less than ten minutes and they'd already devolved into something weirdly dysfunctional. Maybe it was the weather, making everyone so cross. Graham and Ryan were the lone exception, but they all got along so well, usually. And to have any kind of animosity on the Doctor's part directed anywhere but at whatever they happened to be facing at the moment was startling and – uncharacteristic. With a few glaring exceptions, the Doctor was a chronic over-sharer. What you saw was what you got. Being scared or sad didn't usually make her angry.

But going poking at her past – somehow, that made it all more complicated.

She sighed and burrowed deeper into the collar of her jacket, increasing her steps to catch up with the others. The sterile but familiar warmth of her flat complex beckoned. _Absence_ , she thought with an odd twist of her heart. She'd never bothered to miss it before. Home was somehow more appealing and more insufferably dull than it had ever been before she'd left. It was an odd kind of paradox.

“Come on,” she said, catching up finally, fishing her key out of her pocket. They approached the lobby together, where the Doctor was waiting, leaned up against the wall. “Lighten up, you lot.”

“Hey, Doc,” Graham said, testing the waters, but there was no need. When she looked up at their approach regret was plastered all over her face, bright like a neon sign. Chagrin with bite. Yaz could feel it from where she was standing, like a kind of static all its own.

“ _I'm sorry_ – ” They said it both at the same time, and the shock of it was so ridiculous that Ryan burst out into astonished laughter.

“Oh, don't apologize,” the Doctor protested, half a smile gripping the edges of her mouth as well. “That wasn't fair of me,” she said, measured and sincere and so open it was almost uncomfortable. “I said I would do my best to protect all of you, and I meant it. I mean it.”

“Shouldn't have pressed,” Ryan insisted. “I believe you.”

“Still bros?” There was a twinkle of mischief in her eye.

“Ugh,” Ryan sighed fondly, slapping her extended hand with his own in spite of himself. “Still bros.”

All over a little too quickly, if Yaz's conflict resolution training was telling her anything, but the Doctor never lingered on anything for too long. Already she was grinning, sonic gripped distractedly in her hand, waving in the direction of the lifts. “Shall we?” she asked. “What did you need, Yaz? Coat?”

“Coat,” she confirmed, following again. “I should check on our flat, too. Mum and Dad have gone away for the weekend.” And that meant there was a distinct chance her sister had left the place in tatters, but saying it out loud felt a bit like giving voice to prophecy.

“Aha,” the Doctor said knowingly. “So you're avoiding the truth, then.”

“I'm not avoiding it, it's just – lucky coincidence,” she protested. “Until I can come up with a proper answer.” _To who you are, and what we do_.

“Never said I was judging,” the Doctor said eyebrows raising conspiratorially. “Maybe I'm just impressed.”

“It don't take much with you, does it.”

“And that,” the Doctor said, pressing the lift button with far too much relish, “is why I have so much more fun than all of you.”

She made it so easy to buy into, Yaz thought, stepping into the lift behind her with the others, smelling engine oil and camomile. A bit of truth, a bit of joy and wonder, stretched across an overwhelming expanse like a mask. Believing in it was almost effortless. Doubting in it for even a second felt like inconceivable betrayal.

“Oh, come on then,” she sighed, leading the charge out of the lift, believing, for now. The warmth of her friends behind her was more than enough to brighten the gloomy dimness out the hallway windows, casting grey on the walls in front of them, deep, hungry shadows. “I'll impress you deeply with my curated assortment of biscuits.”

“Custard creams?”

“Where exactly do you think we are?”

“As long as it's quick,” Graham interrupted. “I'm starving.”

They rounded the corner together, and everything was all remarkably free of giant spider webs. So far, so good. But as she fit her key into the lock, the door to her neighbour's flat – oh, who was he, nice, old-but-not-overly-racist, small dog, kind eyes, _Mr. Evans_ , that was his name – swung open and a tall figure emerged. A far cry from Mr. Evans, with his crinkled smile and his small, adorable dog.

“Uh,” she said, key still halfway through the lock. “Hiya.” Her friends waved tentatively behind her.

“Miss Khan,” the figure said. He was tall, pale, suit-clad. Some sort of businessman, maybe. Vague features, she thought despite herself, because it was a bit rude. Bland. His shadow stretched the whole horizontal length of the hallway. All the way up to the window, thick and dark and – viscous. Could light behave like that, she wondered, suddenly light-headed. Was it possible?

“Sorry,” she said, steeling herself against the oddness. “PC Khan, actually. Have we met?” She swallowed, all the hairs on the back of her arm suddenly stood on end. “Where's Mr. Evans?”

“I'm the new property manager,” the figure said, smiling, probably. “Mr. Drake. I've met your parents.”

“Right, okay. And Mr. Evans? Were you just meeting him?” She felt the Doctor's hand grab the dampened sleeve of her jacket, smelled camomile again, close, but she couldn't turn to see her face.

Mr. Drake's face was ever so still. She could hardly get a read on it. This was sympathy, maybe.

“I'm afraid,” he said, voice pitch perfect in its kindness, “that Mr. Evans passed on yesterday. The body has been taken away. I've come to inspect the property and to let his neighbours know.”

She blinked. “Passed on? But – ” He'd been in excellent health, for an old bloke. The Doctor's fingers twisted in her sleeve.

“He took his own life, I'm afraid.” Drake lowered his head, very appropriately. “I've slipped a card under your door with numbers to several mental health resources. Your parents don't appear to be home, but I hope you'll pass along my condolences.”

“Uh,” she fumbled. “Yeah. Yeah, of course. Thank you.”

He was saying all the right things, doing all the right things, but her heart was pounding so loudly she thought it might beat right out of her chest. Her skin was crawling.

“Mr. Drake,” the Doctor said, releasing Yaz's sleeve and edging in front of her. Cold suspicion lay flat behind her eyes. “That's quite the shadow you've got there.”

“And who might you be?” he inquired politely.

“The Doctor.”

“Doctor – who?”

The faintest grin. “Doctor John – ” Ryan nudged her gently, but not at all surreptitiously. “ _Jane_. Jane Smith.” The Doctor cleared her throat. “Friend of the family. Pleasure.”

He extended a hand, also very politely. “A pleasure,” he said in kind.

The Doctor shook it sourly, not bothering with the same strange facade of civility.

“A pleasure indeed,” he said as he withdrew, and that bland, boring gaze was flat now with – hunger, Yaz thought, a chill at the back of her neck. What an odd, unpleasant person. “My condolences, again, PC Khan. I hope to see you again under less trying circumstances.”

She nodded, uncomfortable. He swept away, and it was like the air itself became less thick. Her fingers shook around the key as she finally turned it all the way.

“What the hell was that?” Graham whispered loudly as they all piled into her family's flat, alarm splashed across his face. “What an odd bloke. Hope he's not managing down at ours, too, Ryan.”

The Doctor had piled in with them, but her gaze lingered on the hallway as Yaz shut the door behind them, face scrunched in a kind of wince. Her head was tilted, sort of – puzzled, but she shook away the wince before it could get trapped, ran her fingers through her hair in a nervous gesture.

“That was weird, right?” she asked. “I'm not the only one who thought that was extremely weird?”

“Oh, no, Doc,” Graham said. “Couldn't this just be the regular sort of weird?”

“Nope,” she said, shaking her head again, seeming to instantly regret it. The wince returned. “Weird smell, weird death, weird person, weird feeling. _Weird_ shadow.” Her face darkened, just slightly. “Something's going on.”

“An odd feeling, an explainable death, and a weird metal smell does not an alien invasion make,” Graham protested, already looking tired. “C'mon, Doc, you must be able to come round for tea without all of Sheffield being in mortal danger for once.”

“Oi,” she complained. “I'm not bringing the trouble, I'm just finding it.”

“Can't you find it somewhere else?”

“We do find it somewhere else, all the time!”

“That's exactly the point!”

“Ignoring the weird stuff is for boring people,” the Doctor proclaimed. “Are you a boring man, Graham O'Brian?”

“Some days I wish to God,” he said, dragging a tired hand down his face. “Alright. You win.”

“Have your tea,” she said, eyes bright with the kind of excitement that only the potential for trouble could bring. “The readings I collected on the way here will take a moment, anyway.”

With a good-natured sigh he gathered Ryan and set off to the kitchen, under Yaz's direction. Even with the lights switched on, the gloominess of the outdoors permeated through the window and cast everything grey and slow. But the clatter of movement in the kitchen and the comforting sound of the kettle boiling kept it at bay, at least.

Yaz dug through the front closet for her rain coat while they puttered in the kitchen, unearthing it from under a pile of her mother's fancy work coats. The Doctor settled herself sideways in one of the dining room chairs, frowning down at the sonic while it calibrated. Grey light framed the side of her face, catching the wisps of hair that were too short to tuck behind her ears.

“Well?” Yaz asked, tossing her coat onto the table's only empty space, scrabbling for a pen to write a note for her sister. _Stopped by for biscuits, out with friends. Don't break anything. Xoxo_. On the back of an Aldi receipt, but it was better than nothing. “Anything yet?”

“Still needs a moment.” The Doctor looked across at her. “Sorry about all the mystery.”

“You're not really, though.”

The briefest grin. “No, not really.” And a pause. The kettle boiling and the low hum of conversation filled the silence. Cushioned it. “What do you think of me, Yaz?” It was a quiet question, startling in its vulnerability. In its suddenness.

Yaz put her elbows on the table, leaning forward. Skeptical. Dodging the question for a moment, because it wasn't really the right question. She knew the Doctor as well as that by now, at least. “Is all this about what you did to the robots? To Charlie?”

 _About what Ryan asked earlier_? But she kept that to herself.

The Doctor hmmed noncommittally, still sideways in the chair across. Avoiding her gaze, now.

“You did what you could,” Yaz said, believing it. “We all did. Charlie wasn't gonna stop.” She paused, thinking. “It's all about – balance, isn't it? Figuring out how to save the most people, and making a judgement.” She'd had to make choices like that, herself, in her job. Decide who to help first, who could be saved. It was horrible, but it was necessary. Necessary, if you wanted to help anyone at all. Though – it was hard to tell, in the dim lamplight and the gloom from outside, but she thought she saw the Doctor's face darken. It was an unfamiliar expression. Far from the self-righteous anger she'd seen directed at some of their opponents, but beyond that it was unclassifiable. “It's like you said, anyway. You just find the trouble, you don't start it,” she said. “You're still the best person I've ever met.”

The Doctor smiled back at her unconvincingly. Yaz felt sourness at the back of her mouth. A bit like she'd given the wrong answer, somehow. Like she'd failed some sort of test.

“Well,” the Doctor said, hopping up from her chair abruptly, sonic whirring. “Still figuring myself out, I suppose. Ooh, finally calibrated those readings.” All teeth, in her direction, child-like excitement wiping the uncertainty from her face. “Forget the tea. Fancy a bit of investigation?”

“With you?” It wasn't even a question. Yaz scooped her rain coat off the table, the Doctor's excitement infectious, burning at the base of her throat. “Always.”

 

\---

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More to come! It always strikes me that there's a fair lack of casefic in this fandom, so I thought I'd fill in the gap a little bit. I used to be British, but I'm not anymore - usually that's enough to save me from the pants/trousers dilemma, but feel free to point out anything I may have missed!
> 
> Title taken shamelessly from the Ernest Dowson poem.
> 
> First time writing for DW (and these characters are not super well-established, so I'm not quite sure about the tone of everyone just yet - bear with me!), but I'm a long-time fan. Loving what they're doing this season! But also feeling nostalgic for a bit of old-school companion drama, so, again, attempting to fill the gap. Thank you for reading and please let me know what you think! 
> 
> \- W


	2. ii.

 

\---

 

“These readings,” the Doctor scowled down at the sonic, hair plastered to her forehead with rain. “They're not _going_ anywhere. They're – all around us. And not.” She tapped the sonic a few times against the palm of her hand, sharply. Shook it, when that didn't work. Glared down at it, betrayed. “It's not powerful enough to pinpoint the signals it's picking up.”

“So what you're telling me,” Graham said, resigned, soaking wet like the rest of them, but without the luxury of a rain coat (Yaz) or a positive attitude (the Doctor). He had his hands tucked miserably into his armpits. “Is that you've brought us out into the eye of the storm for nothing.”

“This?” the Doctor looked up at the darkening sky, unfazed as her face was pelted with raindrops, thick and heavy and cold. “This is a drizzle.” Thunder barked loudly over her words, lightning flashing far behind them. “An exciting drizzle,” she amended, delighted. Distracted, momentarily, from the failure of the sonic to do – whatever it was she was trying to get it to do.

Yaz hunched further into her coat, amused and resigned in turn. It was getting to be proper evening now and the 'drizzle' had only intensified. The outdoors was wet and loud and cold, and they'd been stuck out in it, in the parking lot of her flat complex, for a good ten minutes while the Doctor waved the sonic around and tried to hone in on whatever she was trying to track. She hadn't told them what it was yet, but that was fairly typical, honestly. Yaz could wait.

“If the sonic can't do it, what can?” Ryan asked, similarly unbothered by the torrent of rain. “Can you build something?” He paused. “Am I gonna regret that question?”

“Depends,” the Doctor said mildly, peering once more into the unknowable depths of the sonic. She glanced up, eyebrows raised. “How attached are you to your kitchen blender?”

 

\---

 

“I have regrets,” Ryan said, watching the Doctor ignore the cup of tea he set down beside her as she methodically dismantled their blender with a slightly horrifying combination of Ryan's (tragically ordinary) screwdriver and her bare hands. He'd lent her the rest of his mechanic's set, but she hadn't bothered with anything else yet. Only asked for a biscuit, an analog radio, and if they would mind terribly if she also re-appropriated their television remote.

“ _You_ have regrets,” Graham said, more mildly, shaking his head. “I'm the one that bought the damn thing in the first place.”

“Like you've ever drank a smoothie in your life.”

“Make me one without spinach thrown in it for once, _then_ we'll see.”

Yaz shook her head, smiling, tuning them and the splatter of rain on the roof out. The Doctor had spread out on the floor of their living room and was fixated on building – whatever she was building. Too focused to be much conversation. But captivating to watch – the way she pulled things apart and put them together in different ways, the exhilarated glint in her eyes. The ecstatic joy of making something. It was contagious, even if the last thing Yaz could remember actually making with her bare hands had been a poorly received ninth year art project.

Lightning crashed outside, just briefly, a streak of light and sound, close enough to rattle the ground slightly. The lights flickered.

The Doctor looked up, distracted. “ _Oi_ ,” she said, frowning. “Hope the power stays on. Don't like rewiring in the dark, too easy to shock yourself.”

“Too right,” Ryan pointed out. “You shock yourself all the time in broad daylight, Doctor.”

Her face scrunched, briefly considering offense, but after a moment she shrugged. “Fair,” she said, returning her focus to the blender in her hands. “It's not my fault, though. Always been a bit clumsy. This body's no exception, unfortunately.”

“I'll set the candles out before we head in for the night,” Graham offered. “If the power shuts off overnight, you'll have them at least.”

“Thanks, Graham.” She pressed the sonic against the blender, frowning. “Worst comes to worst, I could probably have a go at your building's back-up generator, too.”

“Amazing,” he said, shaking his head. “You should stay with us all the time, Doc. You've got an answer to everything.”

She beamed, but it was distracted. Less kilowattage than usual.

“Well,” Yaz said, glancing out the window reluctantly. The world outside was dark with rain, but the sun had long set, too. “Hate to say, but I'd better get home, probably.” She paused. Fingers tapping against her leg, once, twice. “So, I weren't supposed to go into work today, but I was thinking – maybe I could get hold of my friend Anne, in records? See if she can get her hands on Mr. Evans' official cause of death?”

The Doctor's eyes didn't move from the blender, which she was still carefully stripping and dismantling. But the curve of her mouth meant she was listening.

“What makes you think that's got anything to do with this?” she asked mildly.

Another test. That's what it felt like, at least.

“Well, doesn't it?” Yaz asked. “Weird death, weird smell, weird feeling?”

The Doctor's mouth curved all the way into a grin.

“Ten points,” she said, breaking something inside the blender with a loud crack that made everyone except her wince. She looked up, eyes bright but unreadable. Approval – and something else. “See you in the morning, Yaz.”

“See you in the morning, everyone,” she said, smiling. “Meet back here, yeah?”

“Key's under the mat, feel free to let yourself in if we're not up yet.” Graham threw her a wave and a smile as he disappeared back into the kitchen.

Ryan tossed her an umbrella he'd unearthed from behind the sofa. “Stay dry,” he told her. “Pray for our household electronics.”

“No mobile is safe,” she said, grinning in thanks. The Doctor kept working, beneath them, oblivious to their teasing. “Right. Bye!”

She slipped out, retreating into her coat as she left the warmth of the inside for the damp chill of rain. The cold, impenetrable dark. The storm had only increased in the hours since they'd returned – what had been a drizzle had turned considerably more exciting. The trees shook in the wind as she passed by, umbrella nearly ripped from her hands, and she was grateful her own flat was only a few blocks and a skip across the parking lot from Graham and Ryan's. Any further and she might have swallowed her pride and ordered a ride.

But a bit of rain, she thought, reaching into her pocket for her phone. It would take more than that to stop her now. She'd been through far more exciting things.

Was going through more exciting things, very likely, she amended with a sigh. Drops of rain slipped determinedly through the shield of Ryan's umbrella to spit at her phone. Her fingers were almost too cold to scroll through right now, anyway, but it was worth a shot. Her thumb hovered over Anne's contact icon. Over her empty messages app.

Friends, she'd called them. Maybe acquaintances was a better word for it.

She rounded the corner into the parking lot of her flat, picking up her pace as thunder rumbled overhead. Turned off her phone and shoved it back into her pocket, lips pressed together. She'd call a bit later. After she was dry.

Dry, like her bloody phone.

They'd only really been gone for six hours, she comforted herself, sticking as close to the lamps overhead as she could. Not like she'd been gone for a whole week, even though technically speaking it had to have been more than that. _Felt_ like more than that. Her friends, her – _mates_ , her – casual-acquaintances-leftover-from-school-that-only-sort-of-tolerated-her –

Well. They were probably just busy. On a Saturday night. Right.

Or it was like her mum and sister said, and she was too married to her job. Refused so many times that they'd just given up asking her.

She would have refused tonight, anyway. So maybe it didn't matter.

The hallway lights were flickering when she got in the door, and she took the stairs instead, wary of the lifts breaking down while she was in them. Climbed them with relish, heart pounding in her chest, phone quiet in her pocket. Ryan's umbrella closed and soaking into her jeans at her side. No sign of the elusive, terrifyingly bland Mr. Drake, and she could be grateful for that at least.

“Sonya?” she called as she let herself back in, kicking her boots off so she could scrabble for the light. It was dark, inside. Sonya was still out, then. One of them had a life, at least.

Not that either of them could really tell Mum about any of it. There was irony there, if she cared to look for it.

She sighed, stripping off her coat and hanging it on a hook to dry, letting her heartbeat calm as she stood in the light. She wasn't afraid of the dark, or the rain. Or of being left out, not really. Going off on adventures with the Doctor was ten times as exciting as being invited out for pints with a bunch of friends, and her skin was made of tougher stuff, besides. It had to be. It always had to be.

With more force than was probably strictly necessary, she shoved her feet into her favourite slippers and headed towards the sofa and her favourite blanket. Just because Mum was out didn't mean Sonya should necessarily be deprived of a disapproving face when she stumbled in sloshed at three in the morning.

And luckily for her, Yaz was in the perfect mood for it.

 

\---

 

The key to Ryan and Graham's place was indeed placed haphazardly under their welcome mat, and, really, they were just asking for a B&E. Or just an E, really. Yaz had half a mind to give them one of the public safety lectures she had memorized, rolling around in the back of her head.

“Hello?” she called quietly as she entered, shifting the box under her armpit gently so she didn't squish it. “Anyone awake?”

Morning had dawned grey and bleak, the storm from last night still spitting its last breaths as she walked over. The power had gone out in the middle of the night, long past when she'd finally given up and dozed off on the sofa, and when she'd woken the kitchen clock had been flashing blue, watery light pooling in from the windows. Not the cheeriest of mornings, though at least Sonya had gotten home safe. Yaz had nearly tripped over her pointy-toed shoes as she'd left their flat.

Inside, the house was quiet and still, though she thought she could hear the faint movement of footsteps up above. Graham and Ryan must have been awake then, she thought. Just not downstairs yet. And the Doctor –

Was asleep, she noted, surprised, swallowing back a fond laugh at the sight of her, snoring upright on the ground against the sofa, legs sprawled in front of her. The power had gone out here as well, and the living room was half in shadow. Grey and dim. It made the Doctor look a bit washed out, actually. Tired. Even if the snoring was a bit funny.

“Morning,” Yaz tried, a bit louder. She stepped back a hair as the Doctor startled awake, arms flailing into what looked like a haphazard martial arts block. Whatever she called it – Venusian aikido? “Just me,” she said. “I brought pastries.”

“Pastries?” the Doctor said, delighted, arms lowering at the sight of her. Confused, despite the delight.

“For...breakfast?”

“Breakfast.” The Doctor squinted out the window, eyebrows raising at the watery daylight beyond. “It's morning.” Her face scrunched. “Was I sleeping? Why would I have done that?”

The confused delight was, unfortunately, adorable, but it was far too early in the morning for this kind of conversation.

“Because it was night?” Yaz suggested dryly, taking in the scattered pieces of tape and wire and disassembled electronics littering the floor in front of her. A Rubik’s cube, half completed. She set down the box of pastries on the table across from the sofa. “And you were tired?”

The Doctor blinked up at her, not following. A bit purple under the eyes, too, if you looked more closely.

“Not that it's done you much good,” Yaz pointed out. “You don't look all that well rested.”

“Well, I did. Rest,” the Doctor said, ignoring her. But she frowned as she said it, looking unsettled. A hand pushed nervously through her hair.

“Right,” Yaz said. “Never really seen you do it before.” Sleep, properly. Dream. Snore, bless her.

“I've rested!” The Doctor looked back at her, eyebrows raised indignantly. “ I rest. Big fan of rest, me.”

Yaz looked back at her exasperatedly. “That time you passed out on the console floor for fifteen hours while you regrew part of your ectospleen doesn't count.”

An adamant finger, jabbed in her general direction. “That was rest.”

“That was _terrifying_ , that was.”

“I told you to make yourselves comfortable,” she protested.

“And then collapsed into a sleeping death,” Yaz pointed out. “Without giving us any other instructions. We spent an hour trying to figure out if you were even still breathing, you know.”

“Which was – ”

“ _Inconsiderate_.”

The Doctor's head retreated slightly into her neck in indignation as she tried to come up with a retort, but before she could Ryan appeared at the top of the stairs, stepping carefully.

“Morning,” he said, scrubbing a hand down his face. He stopped when he reached the bottom, taking in the eclectic assortment of electronic parts and his borrowed tools cluttering the ground. “Wow.” He looked to the Doctor, who had jumped to her feet in the meantime. “You've been busy.”

Graham came tramping down the stairs behind him, pulling a woollen jumper over his head as he approached. “Oh, look at this mess,” he said, dismayed. “Morning, Yaz.”

“Morning,” she said. “I brought pastries!”

“I only took apart the blender!” the Doctor said. “And the radio. And your television remote, actually. Thought about taking apart your television, too, but – I went to sleep instead.” She frowned, slightly. “I can put it back together when we're done, if you like. Haven't you always wanted a blender that has cloud storage and the ability to transmit long-range radio signals?”

“Don't know why they don't come like that in the shop, honestly.”

“And all of it was for such a good cause, anyway, because now we have,” she held up her invention triumphantly, smile only souring slightly as a piece of it fell off and clattered to the floor as she hoisted it, “ _this_!”

It looked – well. Like a remote control kitchen blender, spinning antennae extended from the top, a series of glowing buttons somehow replacing whatever controls had been at the bottom. A nightmarish assortment of wires shoved in the blender itself. Yaz frowned, skeptical despite herself.

“Uh, okay,” Ryan said, squinting. “And – what it is, exactly?”

“Oldie but a goodie,” The Doctor said a bit smugly. “Revamped, 'cos I had to make it out of a kitchen blender, but same principle.” She grinned conspiratorially. “It goes 'ding' when there's stuff.”

The Doctor was resilient enough that the three blank faces she received in return were not enough to deter her in the slightest.

“Okay,” Yaz said slowly. “And...what stuff is it looking for?”

“Brilliant question, ten more points,” the Doctor said, beaming. “Some sort of organic projection that the sonic didn't recognize. Immaterial, foreign. Could be telepathic, not quite sure yet.” Her grin deepened. “Something _new_.”

“So how does this work then?” Graham asked, venturing over to the table and grabbing himself a pastry. “Thanks Yaz,” he said as an aside, “You're my favourite.”

“ _Hey_ ,” Ryan protested.

“Do we just take it around Sheffield until it starts 'dinging'?”

“Well,” the Doctor said, unearthing the sonic from her pocket. Her face fell into a slight grimace. “That's the thing, actually.” She pressed the sonic to the blender for a moment, concentrating. All three of them jumped as it started beeping loudly, shrill and piercing against the calm dullness of morning.

“The problem,” the Doctor said loudly, wincing, “is that whatever it is, is all around us.”

Graham paused, pastry halfway to his mouth. “And you're not...alarmed by this at all?”

“Can you turn it off, Doctor?” Ryan asked loudly, face twisting. “Not all of us are old and hard of hearing.”

“ _Oi_.”

The Doctor pressed the sonic to her nightmarish blender and the shrill sound it was emitting stopped abruptly.

“Probably _should_ be alarmed,” she speculated, “But to be perfectly honest I have no idea what it is yet. No good to worry preemptively, right?”

“That sounds like something you're saying to cover up your own worry.”

“Absolutely correct,” she said. “But nothing for it but to find out what it is. And that means tracking it down. It's all around us, but it's still more heavily concentrated in certain areas. This thing will help us find 'em.” She looked to them, far too innocently. “All I need's a phone with GPS.”

“Oh, not again,” Ryan whispered, resigned. He looked up at the sky in askance, but fished his phone out of his pocket reluctantly. “No deleting anything this time,” he said firmly, handing it to the Doctor. “And no answering my DMs!”

“I wouldn't dream of it,” she said, pressing the sonic to the front of it, frowning. “Hah! There we go. Love technology. Now they're connected – all we have to do is hone in on the signal.” She glanced up, smiling. “Day trip, anyone?”

 

\---

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short and sweet today, but the next chapter should be along soon! It's mostly done, because this was going to be part of it, but it was getting a bit sprawling, so I thought this was better. Easier to keep track of things (and themes) this way (.....at least for me!)
> 
> Thank you so much for reading (and for your lovely comments!)! As always, I'd love to hear what you thought!
> 
> Best,
> 
> \- W


	3. iii.

\---

 

“You know,” Ryan said, the thermos of tea in his hand rattling as the bus ran over a pothole. “When you said _day trip_ , this isn't quite what I had in mind.”

“I think it's brilliant,” the Doctor said, keeping precarious hold of a pole as she smiled at a baby two seats over. Somehow it was still charming, despite the fact that she was clutching her modified blender to her chest like a baby of her own, its antennae spinning lazily as they approached the source of the signals it was tracking. “Keeps us out of the rain, gives us a lay of the land. I love the bus.”

“I changed my mind,” Graham said, in his element. “Now you're my favourite, Doc.”

“We should've taken an Uber,” Ryan said, pointedly barbed.

“Who has money for that?” Yaz nudged him with her toe, teasing. He and Graham had found seats, but left the Doctor and Yaz to stand. It would have been perfectly fine, but the Doctor kept forgetting to hold onto the pole for balance, too focused on either the phone in her hand or the apparently exotic mystique of Sheffield's industrial park, zooming past the window. Yaz had half a mind to keep a fist in her coat, to hold her upright.

“Not the Doctor, that's for sure.”

“To be fair, she didn't have money for the bus, either.”

“ _Oi_ ,” the Doctor said, pulling her gaze from the window to glance at them. “I thought I had change, I really did. Wasn't my fault it was from Roman times.”

“You know,” Yaz mused, enjoying the lighter atmosphere, even though it couldn't last. She hadn't told them what she knew, yet. “For a moment, I almost thought the driver would accept it.”

Actually, it was a bit of a miracle he'd let them on at all, what with that mishap and the Doctor's blender. They made a bit of an odd group, all four of them together.

“Probably worth fifty times the actual bus fare by now, if you sold it to a museum,” Graham said. “I woulda taken it.”

“Everything's always about money with you lot,” the Doctor muttered, gaze returning to the window. “You know, there's a planet a few systems over entirely made of glass, and the people there barter with their own memories. Hell of an economy.”

“You're just saying that because you've got memories to spare,” Graham said, smiling.

“I'm just saying,” she said. “Wealth is subjective!”

Easy to say, Yaz thought with a rueful smile, when you were an alien without a credit score. But at least the bus fare had been cheap, and to be fair, it was also keeping them out of the rain. She'd thought it might be on the verge of stopping, but the morning's drizzle had only been a pause. The storm was churning back around again. She could see the dark clouds, further off, behind them. Blowing closer. Already the rain was picking up, throwing itself against the bus windows.

Power was still out too, by the looks of it. The city behind them was dark and oddly still, under the cloak of clouds above it. But people made do. They always did. Probably she should have gone into work, actually, even though she wasn't scheduled in until tomorrow – storms were a bit of a paradox that way. Storms, disasters. Some people stuck close and helped one another. Some people took advantage of the chaos to help themselves.

But this was the bigger job. This would be more helpful, in the long run.

“I got hold of Anne last night,” she said quietly, watching the Doctor, who had turned her unreadable gaze to the people crowded around them, oblivious to the danger they were in. Grey, watery light framed her in shadow. “Official cause of death was just what that man Drake said – suicide.” Too many pills, Anne had said. Painless, but horrible. It felt disrespectful to say it out loud. It had felt disrespectful, even then, hearing it, knowing it. She'd sat on the sofa for an hour after, just thinking, shadows creeping by. Wondering, despite herself, what would happen to his silly little dog, now its owner had gone.

The Doctor's eyes narrowed, hearing the tilt to her voice. “But?”

“He's not the only one,” Yaz said, keeping the shudder out of her voice. That, at least, she was good at. Like it or not, she'd dealt with far worse, at least peripherally. Even before she'd met the Doctor. “There's been – a rash of them, just over the past few days. They're calling it an epidemic, internally, but nothing's been made public yet.” And she hadn't even made it to the worst part. “Not just suicides. Even just in my building, over the past week – four heart failures as well. Not officially suspicious, but – unexpected. Statistically unlikely.” She swallowed. “Whatever this is has been goin' on a while. We just haven't noticed it.”

“Wonder how long our Mr. Drake's been in town,” Graham muttered darkly.

“Your building,” the Doctor said quietly. “Could be that this is localized, then. Where were the other deaths, did Anne say?”

“She wouldn't give me too much,” Yaz said, knuckled whitening over the bus pole. “Not too many specifics, but – all within five or six kilometres of my flat, I'd say. I can pinpoint them more exact when I go into work.”

“And wherever we're heading?” Ryan asked, head turning towards them, brow furrowed.

“Bet you a denarius it's within range,” the Doctor said, a bit grimly. “But why? And where's the epicentre, then?”

“'Bout to find out, aren't we,” Graham said, standing with a sigh. “This is our stop next, right, Doc?”

On the fringe of the industrial park, Yaz noted, as they filed their way to the back door. She glanced out at the darkening sky, resigned. Wishing she hadn't forgotten Ryan's gift of an umbrella by her shoe rack. She pulled the hood of her rain coat over her head instead, even though it made her look a bit like a gangly twelve-year old, at least according to Sonya.

A twelve-year old with weapons training and a lot of ear piercings, but, still. In principle.

The bus came to a halt with a groaning sigh that was just familiar enough to tug at her heart. The doors creaked open, the chill of the air outside hitting her face suddenly, light and heat leaking out with them as they piled out. The only passengers to leave.

“Doctor?” Yaz said, tugging gently at her coat as she held the doors open with her elbow. One foot on solid ground. She had her gaze fixed into the crowd of people, spaced out entirely. Blender tucked absently under her arm. “Doctor, the door.”

The Doctor's gaze broke away. “Right,” she said, tight-lipped, hopping out of the bus. “Right, sorry. Let's get a shift on.”

“What – ” Yaz started, but the Doctor moved past her, eyes glued now to Ryan's phone as she whipped it out of her pocket. Yaz turned back to look into the crowd, obscured slightly by the window as the bus pulled away, but it was only ordinary people. A baby in a pram, a throng of businessmen, working-class folk on their way to their jobs. Two goths. A small family. A striking blonde.

Who had she been looking at, Yaz wondered. Or had she been looking at anyone at all?

She swallowed back a sigh and turned from the bus stop. A mystery wrapped in an enigma wrapped in a charity shop coat. And far too quiet today, she thought privately, catching up with the others, crowded in front of a derelict building. _Though you'd only notice if you were looking_. The building ached with neglect, windows smashed in, loose scaffolding from the roof blowing in the gale, clanging against the side of the building with a discordant echo.

“Abandoned office building!” the Doctor said, face lighting up, hair curling damply around her face. She wasn't quite bouncing on her heels, but it was a near thing. “Brilliant!”

“Not loving this vibe,” Ryan said, keeping close. “You're sure this is right, Doctor?”

“Very sure,” she said, glancing down at his phone to double check. “This is the place. Also, someone called 'YorkshireDollxx9' has been – ”

“ _Okay_ ,” he snatched the phone back with surprising speed. If he could have blushed, he would have, Yaz was sure. “I'll just hold onto this for a bit.”

“Suit yourself,” she said, completely oblivious, somehow. “It got us this far at least.” She fished the sonic out, extending it gingerly. “Shall we?”

“I wish you wouldn't say it like we have a choice,” Graham said, filing in behind her reluctantly, tugging his hat over his ears with a grimace. He'd worn a rain coat today, at least. Ryan still hadn't bothered. Only thrown a leather jacket over his hoodie and left his head completely bare, though he still didn't seem bothered by it.

“YorkshireDollxx9?” Yaz asked, nudging him with a mild grin as they followed behind, feet crunching on the wet gravel. This place was well and truly abandoned – the pavement was just as derelict as the building, cement cracked through and filled with growing things, bits of rock and stone. Life, despite itself.

“What?” he protested, grinning down at her. “I do have a life here, you know. It's different, now, but.” He shrugged, grin falling. “It goes on.”

She felt her own smile falter. “Yeah,” she said, after a moment. Gravel crunched in between them. Grief, too, just barely skirted. “Yeah, I reckon it does.”

“You have a life here, too, you know,” he said, surprising her. She bit her lip, annoyed. Mostly at herself. She really was that obvious, apparently, if Ryan Sinclair was noticing. Bless him.

“Do I?” she asked.

“Probably could if you tried,” he said.

She knocked him with her shoulder, grimacing at the rain. “It's easy for you, people _like_ you,” she said. “My own co-workers even tell me I should lighten up.”

“So lighten up,” he said, like it were that easy. “Or don't. If you have to change to get other people to like you, then they're not worth bothering with, anyway.” He knocked her back, pointedly. But not hard enough to make her stumble. “We like you just fine. I could text you sometimes, if it would make you feel better.”

She glared up at him, but there was no heat to it. He was right, probably, was the thing. And kind to say it, too, though she wasn't about to admit that.

His face scrunched in a parody. “Do you think the Doctor would ever have a pint with us?”

The mental image that particular scenario conjured up was abjectly hilarious. “You know,” she said, smiling again. “I'm not sure she would, but I think she would be delighted if you asked.”

“Yeah,” he said, laughing with her. “She don't quite fit with normal life, does she? However much she thinks she wants to.”

“Terrible at small talk, but good in a crisis.” Yaz shook her head. “Hell of a way to live.”

“No shortage of crises, though.”

That, at least, was true.

The building loomed before them, not nearly a skyscraper, but tall enough to cast a shadow. They were blanketed in it. Smothered, this close to the building's entrance. The glass doors were shattered. Beyond them, she could see graffiti on the walls behind, debris and rubbish scattered on the ground.

“Oh,” Yaz said, hands jammed in her pockets, swallowing back the anxiety jumping up her throat. “I shouldn't be letting us do this. Trespassing, B&E, mischief – ”

“Is it really a break and enter,” the Doctor asked, pointing her sonic at the door without any attempt at discretion, “if the door was left unlocked?”

“Yep,” Yaz said, “technically,” but they weren't listening. “Greater good,” she sighed, as they picked their way carefully through the entrance, stepping over the shards of glass. “Greater good. Sure. That'll hold up in a court of law. I should've got us a warrant.”

“No time,” the Doctor said, sonic whirring in front of her, the antennae on the blender spinning precariously. Her eyes were focused, dark. “Ironically, that's often the problem when it comes to time travel.”

“No one's around,” Graham reassured her. “I doubt anyone cares very much about who enters this place anymore.”

“Except whoever's using it for – whatever they're using it for,” Ryan said, creeping up to join them. Spooked, by the tightness of his jaw. That was fair, honestly. The inside of the building sheltered them from the rain, at least, but it was dark inside, and cold. Stale and abandoned. Only grey light, filtering in through the dirty, shattered glass, casting jagged shadows on the wall. And the heavy sound of rain echoing in the empty corridors as the storm outside picked up. Yaz shuddered, despite herself. Thinking, unbidden, of Mr. Drake's absent, hungry eyes.

“Brave heart, Ryan,” the Doctor said, plunging on ahead, boots echoing loudly on the linoleum. She paused briefly to inspect a lonely office chair, a stack of files scattered on the floor by the wind. “Sonic says there's no one here but us.” She paused. “And whatever we're tracking.”

“Have we still not figured that out yet?”

“Working on it!” she called behind. “The source is just around the corner. Keep up!”

Yaz shook her head, rounding the corner with Ryan and Graham at her heels. The deeper they went, further away from the brighter entrance, the worse the light got. Filtered through old, untreated glass, reflecting off the walls. They'd been a sort of industrial mint, once, she thought, skidding to a halt. Now the paint was yellowed and peeling. Sickly green and shadowed. And the corridor they'd just turned into – empty. Except for the shadows thrown across and an oddly-shaped sphere, just sat there in the middle of it all.

“ _Hah_ ,” the Doctor said as they approached, halting abruptly, face twisting. “ _Oh_ ,” she said, buckling slightly. Her knuckles whitened around the blender.

“Everything alright?” Yaz asked, stepping in closer.

“Just – bit of a wobble,” the Doctor said, straightening, stalking forward like it hadn't even happened. Her hair covered her face as she moved, expression hidden. “Nothing to worry about, let's take a closer look!”

“Looked a bit like something to worry about,” Graham muttered.

Yaz sighed. “Too late,” she said, falling into step behind the Doctor, who hadn't bothered to wait. “Come on. It's like she said – no fun getting into trouble on your own.”

“That sphere looks proper ominous,” Graham said, as the Doctor scanned it with the sonic, her face set in a frown that looked more like a wince the longer you stared at it. Yaz pressed her lips together, unsure of what to make of it all. “Is it dangerous?”

“Probably,” the Doctor said, picking it up and peering into it, puzzled.

“Oh no,” Ryan said over Graham's sigh as the piece of metal moved closer to her face. “Don't lick it, please don't lick it – ”

Too late.

“That,” the Doctor said, face scrunching thoughtfully, “is definitely not from Earth. Metal composition's all wrong.”

Ryan shook his head in dismay. “How can you tell?”

“Here,” she gestured, holding it out to him. It glinted in the dull light, dark and opaque. “Have a taste for yourself.”

“Think I'll pass, thanks,” he said, face twisting. “What is it?”

“Metallic,” she said, taking another contemplative lick. Possibly, Yaz thought, just because she knew he thought it was gross. Or possibly not at all. The inside of that head was impenetrable on a good day. Today was not a good day. “And also slightly – organic. Somehow. It tastes a bit musky. Not sure what that means.” She held it away from her face, grimacing belatedly. “Probably nothing good, actually.”

“Where's it from, then?” Graham asked, stepping in closer. He'd tucked his hands into his armpits, to ward off the chill. It was damp in here, there was no escaping that. Outside, there was a brief flash of lightning through the window. Thunder, in its wake, a beat and a half later. The storm was back.

“Not sure.” The Doctor's voice was sour.

“What's it do?”

“Also not sure.” The Doctor shook her head. “I don't understand, it's not – generating anything, there's no – ” She shook it, irritated. “What are you? And if you're not the origin, then where is it coming from?”

“Sorry, hold on,” Yaz said, glancing down at the sphere, uneasy. It didn't quite – look right. Something about it was a bit too flat, a bit too smooth. Like a 2-D object thrown into 3-D space without being rendered properly. “It's not the source? Why did your blender lead us here, then?”

“It's not the source of the energy, but it's harnessing it somehow, I think.” The Doctor set it down at her feet, sonic pointed at it. Something warring in her face. “Amplifying it. Spreading it. I should break it, probably.” Her mouth was set in a grim line, face pale. Pinched. “But I'd really like to know how it works.”

She turned and stalked away from it, pacing the length of the hallway and back, agitated.

“Can't you just break it and take it apart?” The linoleum squeaked as Ryan moved half a step closer.

“As soon as I break it,” she said, facing them again, “the insides will all melt together and I'll get nothing. It's been biologically programmed. Clever tech. Clever tech that I don't _recognize_.” She crouched down again, staring at it, eyes flat. Curious despite herself now, all the enthusiasm sucked from her. “But I think,” she said, in a quiet voice that still echoed, “that it's half made out of shadows. And that's never a good thing.”

“How can something be made out of shadows? How's that even possible?” Yaz swallowed, feeling chilled. “And how did it get here?”

The Doctor, in what was becoming an irritating habit that Yaz had never really taken notice of before, answered precisely none of her questions. “Fam?” she tried instead, grimacing a bit in regret, not that it ever seemed to stop her. Evidently coming to conclusions that she wasn't ready to share with the class yet. “Stay in the light.”

“Oh, ta, that's comforting advice,” Graham said, glancing up at the dull, shattered light fixtures above them. “The whole city's just gone without power.”

“Starting to think that's more than a coincidence,” Ryan said, shifting uncomfortably.

“I'm not here to coddle you, Graham,” the Doctor said, standing from her crouch. She picked up the sphere and pocketed it, quickly. Before she could think about it too much, probably, Yaz thought. But she didn't look too happy about it. About any of this. “I'm not here to coddle any of you. There's something going on here. _Stay in the light_.”

“Alright, alright,” Graham said, in a placating tone of voice that he usually only used on Ryan. “We'll be okay. Still a couple hours of daylight yet. We only left around late morning.”

But the daylight around them was murky and dim, Yaz couldn't help but notice, stomach dropping. And the sky outside was cloudy and dark. Bruised. Not a drop of sunlight peeking through. Avoiding the dark, she thought, had been made all but impossible.

The Doctor only shook her head, distracted. “I really hope this isn't what I think is,” she muttered, face still twisted into a frown, glaring down into the sonic. Worry like a static, reaching out to the rest of them. She sniffed once, loudly. “But it doesn't quite – ”

“Er, Doc,” Graham interjected, still oddly careful. She glanced up, eyebrows raised, face still pinched. Red trailing delicately down onto her upper lip. “Your nose is bleedin'.”

“Ah,” she fumbled for a moment, free hand diving into her pockets, sonic readings momentarily forgotten. She unearthed three separate key chains, a plastic frog toy, an ancient graphing calculator, and a banana, all of which she left on the floor by her feet. “No handkerchiefs,” she said, frowning briefly, sniffling in vain. “That's new. Tell you what, wait here a moment, I'll be right back. Hold my blender?”

She shoved it into Graham's arms with a tight smile and left them without another word, coat trailing behind her, disappearing into the dimness of the hallway ahead. Not bothering to heed her own warning, but that, at least, was fairly typical. Unlike the rest of it.

“Something's off,” Ryan said, as soon as she sped away. “Something's off, right? Since this morning?”

“One of us needs to talk to her,” Yaz muttered softly, a chill gripping the back of her spine. _Something off_ , indeed. Since they'd arrived back on Earth, more like. “Get a straight answer.”

“You do it, Yaz,” Graham said to her. “You're her favourite.”

“I am not!” She paused. “I am a bit, aren't I.”

“Quickly, now,” Graham recommended, glancing in the direction she'd left with an exasperated wince. “She took off towards the men's.”

Yaz allowed herself one moment of resigned contemplation as she peered into the dim hallway, rain thundering ominously overhead, before she took off into a jog. Into the dark, but after a friend.

“Doctor,” she called, catching up. “Uh, Doctor – ” Yaz grabbed her elbow gently and dragged her toward the ladies. “Sorry. Just – ”

Not that it really mattered, following social convention in the middle of an abandoned building in an industrial park, but, well. She'd take what pretext she could get.

“Ugh,” the Doctor said, realizing belatedly. Her face scrunched, but it was a derisive variety. “ _Gender_. So confusing. I hate this century.” The scrunch turned contemplative. “Hmm. Never hated it that much before, y'know.” The scrunch disappeared entirely. “Ohhh, _I was part of the problem_ ,” she said, too caught up in the upsetting revelation to object to Yaz pulling her through the door of the ladies. It was dimmer than the hallway, and it dripped unsettlingly. And that was before the smell hit. Damp cold and toilet cleaner. Lovely. “How did I not notice before? I shared a chocolate croissant with Audre Lorde once, y'know, back when I was Scottish. And a man.” She frowned as Yaz left her leaning against the sink to fetch a handful of toilet roll. “The first time, not the second. I think, anyway, it all blends together after a while, to be perfectly honest – ”

“Doctor,” Yaz said bluntly, starting to dab at the blood under her nose when she didn't take the initiative herself. “Are you alright?”

“She helped me save suburban Baltimore from a herd of mutated squirrels,” she muttered absently, shuddering. “Wonderful writer. Very handy with a baseball bat.” Her face was still pale and far too pinched under the dull, green light. The evasion was a tactic, Yaz thought, suddenly irritated. That was new. She'd never really been proper irritated with the Doctor before.

Wasn't proper irritation, though. Not the pure sort, not if she really thought about it. It was the worried kind. Settled under her skin and sat there, though she wasn't quite sure why yet.

“Doctor _,_ ” she tried again.

Those eyes skirted past hers before they could meet, but there was a frantic gleam to them that she hadn't seen since they'd been trapped – the Doctor's words, not her own – on the Tsuranga. Something cagey and irrational. Unease curdled Yaz's stomach.

“Yeah,” the Doctor said, taking the tissue out of Yaz's hand and pushing herself away from the sink. “I'm always okay, me.”

“Right, 'course, it's just – ”

“Never better,” she insisted, cheerfulness too tight in her mouth to be genuine. She swept her way past, bloodied tissue clutched between her knuckles, towards the door.

“Think you're lyin',” Yaz said to her back, before she could change her mind.

The Doctor paused.

“Would I lie to you, Yasmin Khan?”

 _Yes_ , she thought but didn't say, though she wasn't sure why she was so certain. The Doctor had never given her a reason to think she might. She was the most wonderful person Yaz had ever met. But there was an edge to her right now, something sharp and ragged. Unfamiliar. The hairs on the back of her neck were all stood up.

“Turn around,” she said. “Would you look at me? What's goin' on?”

But the Doctor stayed where she was. “Time to go. Come on, get a shift on.”

“We only just got here,” she protested, following the other woman out the door, back out into the hallway, half-dim with shadows and the sickly flicker of moving clouds. She could hear rain pricking against the roof, still. A crash of thunder and lightning out the window, bright and loud. The shadows on the wall shuddered and the Doctor stumbled.

“ _Doctor_ ,” she said again, fruitlessly, lunging forward to grab an elbow. The squeak of Ryan's trainers echoed across the floor as he and Graham approached, blender in hand. “Look at me.”

Her grasp was shaken off. The Doctor straightened, face bone-white. Strained.

“We've found all there is to find here,” she said, the brightness of her voice thin and forced. “And it's well past tea time. Getting dark soon. Well – darker. Don't you think you lot should be going home?”

“What about you, though?” Ryan was frowning, suspicion crawling its way slowly across his face. “Don't you wanna come with? You love tea.”

“You're welcome back at ours again, Doc,” Graham added, a bit cautious. “Could finally get you that egg sandwich.”

“Love tea, as a temporal concept and a beverage,” the Doctor said, smiling. It looked like it hurt. The whole affair was a bit like watching a mask slowly sliding off. Yaz wasn't sure if she should have been helping to keep it on, or to rip it off entirely and just get it over with. “But, ah, should be gettin' back to the TARDIS. Alone time, all that.”

“Doctor, you hate being alone.”

“I – ” She raised a finger. It stayed up. Wilted, a little bit. “...do.” She took a steeling breath, mask back on. “But! You lot need sleep, and I need to take a look at the sphere thingy where it's safe and check in on the TARDIS, who, I might add, is perfectly reasonable company, so there's really no need – ” Another clap of thunder interrupted her, lightning brightening the inside of the hall for the briefest of moments, percussive and loud. She buckled, just for a second, hands raising to her ears before she forced them back down. Lips pressed together tightly, bloodless. In pain, and panicked about it. Yasmin thought back to the Tsuranga, about her frantic refusal to stop, to sit, to be – still for even a moment. Like she couldn't bear to catch up with herself, not for one breath. Even if it was for her own good.

They hadn't stopped her, then. Hadn't stopped her on Kandoka's moon, either.

“Doctor,” she said, as stern as she could. “Look at me. What's wrong?”

“Nothing.” Tight-lipped.

“You're not selling it, mate,” Ryan said.

“It's all fine,” she protested, fists clenching and unclenching in a nervous habit that meant it all was most certainly not. “Really. Just don't – feel like myself. I'd like to be alone.”

“ _Really_ not selling it.”

The finger came up again, more jabby this time. “Don't gang up on me,” she all but snapped, wincing at the volume of her own voice. At the sharpness of its tone, too, Yasmin thought, still unnerved. It wasn't – unusual, exactly, but she tended not to direct it at her own friends. “Nothing is wrong. Let's _go_. I'll take you home.” She spun on her heels, coat fluttering.

All they could do was follow. The Doctor was like that, a bit. More force than person, when you let her be. You became trapped in her orbit, where she set the rules. Rules that changed, all the time.

Rules that Yaz had never once thought to question, before now. And wasn't that odd, probably?

“What do you think?” Ryan muttered to her, as they trudged behind, light still flickering as lightning flashed intermittently. Rain sounding tinnily off the roof. “Related to whatever's going on here, or not?”

“Hard to say,” she replied, lifting the hood of her rain coat as they made it back outside. The air smelled damp and industrial. Cold metal, up her nose. She paused, reluctant. “You might be right. Don't really know her all that well, do we?”

“Sure we do,” he said, hands shoved into the pockets of his hoodie. “I was – I dunno. Wasn't myself, yesterday. It's like I said. She's our mate.”

“Yeah, but – ” It was so hard to articulate. He was right. But so was she, for that matter. It was two things. Two truths, with the three of them stuck in the middle somehow. They knew the Doctor well, and hardly knew her at all. “Just because she's our mate don't mean she tells us everythin'.”

“Not what mates are for,” Ryan said, frowning. “Besides, I thought now wasn't the right moment for askin' questions.”

“Don't you get cross, too,” she said, shoving her hands in her pockets. “I didn't mean it like that, I'm just – ”

“Worried,” he said, whatever sharpness there had been bleeding out of his voice. “And confused, 'cos the Doctor's a big ball of sunshine and you hate being snapped at by her, because we're your only friends and we're supposed to all get along, all the time, forever.”

“That's not it,” she said. That was, in fact, it. Ryan kept his face forward smugly, raindrops trailing down his head. She sighed as they trudged up to the bus stop together, where the Doctor and Graham were waiting already in stiff but companionable silence. “How'd you pull off being so smart and so thick at the same time?”

“Ah, see, now you've tapped into what every teacher I've ever had wrote in the Additional Comments section of my school reports.”

“I don't think teachers are allowed to call their students thick.”

“They made a special exception for me.”

“Hurry up, you lot!” Graham called over his shoulder as they approached, blender still cradled in his arms. Its antennae were starting to droop a bit pathetically, hounded by the rain. “Dave's driving the route this afternoon, he's very punctual. Get your change out.”

Ryan shook his head, fishing in his pockets for coins. “We should just get an Uber,” he muttered with a sigh.

It was easy to agree with the sentiment, standing soaking wet and cold in the open air. But she thought she could see the bus lights in the distance, warm and yellow against the grey surrounding them, and she thought of the inside, warm and bright. Crammed full of people. Creaking loudly and cranking out heat from ancient air vents. The ordinary, made inviting. The assurance of light, as they dragged themselves back into the city, with more problems than they'd left with.

The Doctor cut a cold silhouette, up against the edge of the pavement, hands shoved into her pockets. Expressionless, as she peered down the road. A hint of rust, dried at the edges of her nostrils.

“Maybe,” Yaz said, settling into her coat with a sigh, cold metal rain still sharp in her nose. “Maybe not.”

 

\--- 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey, how about that finale, huh? (slight - slight spoilers follow) That tension was *chef's kiss* gorgeous, exactly what I've been waiting for (Bradley Walsh, holy shit, man) (I'm shook). Hopefully we'll see some more of that in the coming series. Tbh the Doctor is still a bit (??) of a mystery to me, but I kind of like that as well. I know we're all waiting for her to go to town and SnapTM (and...I mean, that's - make no mistake, that's what I'm doing here, that's where we're heading lol) but I kind of like that it's not her default? She's clearly got that bombast and that anger within her (Jodie Whittaker is so expressive, she gets across a million things in a single glance) but I'm starting to think it's really not who the Doctor wants to be, this time around - and that's deeply interesting. And in the meantime, she can still be a bit too blunt, a bit of a hypocrite (the rules!! girrrrrrl), a little bit sharp, while still being so cheerful and curious and full of hope. It's a really interesting characterization and I can't wait to see what's next!
> 
> anyway, thank you so much for reading! I'd love to hear what you thought! (and uh - sorry for the slightly unrelated rant)!  
> \- W


	4. iv.

\---

The bus was even busier than it had been earlier, crowded now with people on their way home from work, crushed together, cross.

“Bit grim, this,” Yaz said quietly, taking note. No one was causing any trouble, but there was – static, in the air. The sort of tension she'd come to recognize in crowds on a precipice, just shy of boiling over into irrationality, violence. People on their last nerve.

“How's that?” Ryan asked, gritting his teeth as the bus hit a pothole. They were all standing, this time, crammed together into a corner by the back door, and it must have been hard for him to balance, she knew. But he wasn't complaining. Not about that, at least.

“Haven't you noticed?” she said, adjusting her grip on the pole they were sharing. “Not a single person's smiling.”

“We're taking public transit, though.”

“ _Oi,_ ” Graham protested, behind them.

Ryan had a point, she supposed. But still, there was something – something grey in the air. Pressing down. The shadows seemed thicker, darker. Pressing at them from the outside, maybe. She didn't think she was just imagining it, though it might have just been the rain.

“You don't think something's odd about all of this?”

Unbidden, she turned to look at the Doctor, face pressed a bit miserably into the pole she was hanging onto. Eyes distant, lost in thoughts that didn't look very pleasant. Not listening to them, she didn't think. It was a far cry from the scant hours since they'd taken the bus the first time.

She didn't like it. The Doctor didn't _brood_.

“I think,” Graham said kindly, catching her eye, “that what we all need is to get out of this rain, that's all. Maybe the Doc could look at the generator in your building while we're at it, get us back in business with the lights, too.”

That would solve one of their apparent problems, at least. There was something about the power going out, she thought, shivering. It made people go a bit funny. Like they hadn't been living for centuries without it just fine. People were so quick to forget. Maybe that was it, the source of all this tension in the air, the greyness of it.

She really should have been going in to work. There was sure to be some kind of mischief about, tonight. But she hadn't been called in.

“Come on,” she sighed, resigned, as the bus pulled in to the stop outside her flat. She scraped her hood back over her ears. “Back out into the wet.”

The rest of them followed her this time, straggling, and she didn't like that either. It weren't meant to be her at the front, leading the charge. Even just across the parking lot, it felt wrong. And her building looked wrong, too, blending in with the shadows, an empty space in the dark ahead. Nothing at all like the image in her head, warm and inviting and so wonderfully, dreadfully boring. It had become a sort of non-space. She was afraid of it, she realized, stopping just outside the doors, the gloom within. Pulse pounding in her throat.

“Brave heart,” the Doctor said quietly, right at her ear, seeming taken with the phrase. A spark of – something, back behind her eyes. Fear, curiosity. Both. Strong enough to crest through whatever strange mood had overtaken her earlier. “Nothing there in the dark that isn't there in the light.”

Yaz frowned. “Is that meant to be comforting?”

“In theory,” the Doctor said, heading for the doors. Her hair was plastered to her head again, curling damply around her ears. “Though,” she tossed over her shoulder. “I should note, it is absolutely a lie.”

“Cheers,” Ryan said dryly, following.

The door squeaked as it opened, the building's lobby deserted, quiet. Not utterly dark – the air glowed softly red, emergency LEDs lit up in the corners. Just enough to see by, though they lent an eerie tinge to the air around them. Yaz swallowed back another shudder, knuckles white around the keys in her pocket.

“Maintenance is just off to the side,” she said, shakier than she preferred, guiding them. “Behind the lifts.”

Their footsteps echoed on the tile, more noticeable than ever in the still, quiet air. How strange, then, she thought, pulse hammering in her ears as a dark figure rounded the corner.

They hadn't even heard him approach.

“Mr. Drake,” the Doctor said, a tad belligerent. Still not bothering to match the odd, excessive courtesy of him. “No torch, I see. And human eyes work so wonderfully in the dark.”

“These emergency lights are doing quite a fine job of ensuring our adherence to local safety bylaws,” he said with a calm smile. “So a torch is quite unnecessary.”

“Is that what you were inspecting?” That innocence was all flash-bang pantomime, wide eyes, tilted head. Suspicion lurking sour underneath. Usually, it was a bit more convincing, Yaz thought with a shiver. “Adherence to code?”

“Just finishing up here. I have other properties to inspect as well.”

“I'll just bet you do. You must be very busy.” The Doctor smiled at him, thinly. “So busy, you've forgotten to give yourself a shadow.”

His placid expression flickered, just for a moment. Yaz felt another stripe of fear up her throat, churning in her stomach. She looked down, reluctantly. The Doctor was right. The emergency lights were throwing watery shadows of the four of them across the ground, towards the door, blood-tinged and grey – but Mr. Drake had none at all.

“Don't feel too bad,” the Doctor said, eyes flat. “Your one from yesterday wasn't very good, anyway.”

“Human eyes make all sorts of mistakes in low-light, Doctor Smith,” he said, gently. Appearing unruffled, though Yaz thought he might be. “Especially under mental duress. I forgive your misperception. Good evening.”

He turned to leave before any of them could reply, shadowless, smooth. He moved like a person, but – it was like her brain couldn't quite make sense of it, that motion. His existence as a whole. Like it was filling in the blanks for her.

A bit like the sphere, actually. Un-rendered, incomplete.

The Doctor's eyes tracked him as he left, and there was that look there again, that indecisive frustration. Her gaze went from him, to the pocket with the sphere, to the maintenance room, to the door again, where his unsettling silhouette could be glimpsed making its way across the parking lot through the window. Back to the sphere.

She exhaled through her nose, slowly, face twisting into a scowl. “So annoying,” she said. “Okay. One thing at a time, which is daft, which isn't _good enough_ , but – ” The sonic was pulled out of her other pocket, twirled once in her grasp. “Come on. I'll have a look at your generator.”

“Some of us could follow him,” Ryan suggested as they trailed behind her. The comforting whirr of the sonic interrupted the eerie stillness surrounding them. The world was awful quiet, without the sound of all the things that ran it. No air conditioning, no heat. No lights to hum in the background.

“No,” the Doctor said, yanking open the unlocked door. The smell of cleaning fluid and rusted metal wafted out at them. “No splitting up. I want you three to stay together.”

“What are we dealing with, Doc?” Graham said, a bit carefully, as they piled into the room together. Edging closer to the problem than the rest of them had dared, so far, since they'd left the industrial park. “That's got you so worried.”

“I'm not worried,” she insisted, crouching down to peer at the generator, red light throwing her face into watery shadow. “Okay, maybe a bit worried.”

“More than a bit, I think.”

“ _More than a bit_ ,” she shot back at him, irritated, running a careful hand around the edge of the generator. “Fine. Yes. I'm worried. Something is going on here, and I don't understand what. Too many separate pieces that don't make any sense put together.” She sat back on her heels, scowling. “And the back-up generator's been fried. Sonic can't fix it. Wonder whose handiwork _that_ is.”

“Why would Drake blow the generator of his own property?” Graham said, scratching the back of his head. “Surely the insurance ain't that good.”

“I think he wants you in the dark,” the Doctor whispered. “But _why_?” She straightened, still scowling. “Hate a good mystery. No, sorry, that's a lie, _love_ a good mystery. If I could just – ” Her face scrunched in frustration. “Think!” She whirled to face them, looking pinched. “Who has got better candles? Battery-operated lights? Graham, Yaz?”

“My candles are mostly scented,” Yaz admitted, much as it galled her. Out of all of them, she was usually the one most prepared for an emergency. “And I've got a good torch in my bag. Ryan and Graham are probably better equipped at home.”

“Let's get you all back to Ryan and Graham's, then,” the Doctor declared. “Come on, team.” She paused as she swept past them, face twisting. “Sorry, sorry – is that alright? Need anything from here, before we go? Everything okay?”

“No,” Yaz said, quietly. “It's fine, my sister's with friends, and my parents aren't back until midweek. We can go.” Sonya had texted her earlier, so at least she was safe.

Safer than they were, at the moment.

“Alright,” the Doctor said, though it all was most definitely not. “Let's go. _Once more unto the breach_.” She turned back towards the door and the gale beyond, hands on her hips. Paused, considering. Rain hammered away at the glass. “Not really as dramatically satisfying in this context, actually.”

That there were other, more fitting contexts said a lot about the Doctor's life, Yaz thought, trailing behind into the storm, the universe momentarily righting itself. And not much at all. What did it say about her's, that she could think of better contexts too?

“I keep thinking we've finally got out of the rain,” Graham sighed, yanking his hat over his ears again. “And I keep getting proven wrong.”

“Cheer up, Graham,” Ryan said, slapping him gently on the back. “You'll be indoors soon enough.” He leaned in. “Could've been indoors sooner, if we'd taken an Uber.”

“This betrayal won't stand.”

“Public transit's going the way of the dinosaurs and you know it, mate.”

“ _Blasphemy_. And I'm not your mate, I'm your grandad.”

“Okay, mate.”

On, and on. Yaz shook her head, drowning all of it out, as usual. The way to Ryan and Graham's place from her own was all but ingrained in her feet, by now, and the Doctor knew it just as well. But the walk there was gloomier than yesterday's had been, without even the false comfort of the streetlights to offer the illusion of safety. Eventually they made it, navigating the final few blocks with the help of the giant, industrial torch Yaz had thrown in her bag that morning. It felt good to be prepared, even with something as small as that. If she'd learned anything, even from before she'd started travelling with the Doctor, it was that life loved to throw the unexpected at you – and that the best defence against it was to be ready for anything. Especially the things that were likely. Predict the outcomes, prepare accordingly.

Which sounded a bit like one of the pithy phrases they'd loved to throw around during her police training, actually, but it could stand on its own as good advice.

Either way, it felt good to be doing something, to be useful for once. Today, especially, she felt a bit like all they'd done was wander around wondering. Dragged from place to place, but kept at the fringes of what was actually going on. Clearly, the Doctor had some clue, but she was being oddly tight-lipped.

Odd in general, if Yaz was being honest with herself. But she was at a loss for how to address it.

“Here we are then,” the Doctor said as they marched up the path to Graham and Ryan's. She waited while they climbed the stone steps, slippery with rain, and hopped up two herself, so she was almost at eye-level. The three of them huddled under the awning in front of the door at the top. “I'll leave you lot here, then,” she said, peering up at them through the rain, inscrutable.

“What are you gonna do?” Ryan asked, frowning. “If you won't stay.”

The Doctor shrugged, far too casually. “Got my blender, got my sonic. Got your phone.” She raised her eyebrows beseechingly and he handed it back over with a sigh. “There'll be more of these spheres around, I should think. If I can find another one that works, I might be able to chance breaking this one.”

“We'll come with you, Doc,” Graham offered, stepping closer. “Just give us a minute to dry off, get some food, we'll follow you.”

“No, I want you to stay here,” she said. Yaz could see her pulse in her neck. “I'm dropping you off. There's nothing more you can do tonight.”

“But we're a team,” Yaz protested. “You said it yourself, going off on your own's a bad idea.”

“I never listen to my own advice,” the Doctor said, fast and sharp and – wrong, somehow. Her knuckles were white around the blender, around Ryan's phone. “Neither should you, unless I tell you that you should. Right now – you should.” She smiled, tightly. “Light all your candles and stay in the light. Keep track of your shadows. If you lose one or gain one,” she wiggled the hand with Ryan's phone in it, “call me.”

“What does that mean?” Graham asked, alarmed. “You do know what this is, then.”

It wasn't quite accusatory, but it darkened her face anyway, pale in the surrounding gloom, in the harsh, focused light of Yaz's torch. She closed her eyes, just briefly.

“Just a hunch,” she said, mouth still tight. She scrubbed the hand with the phone in it across her eyes, wincing. “Not everything fits. I can't – _think_ right, I'm missing something. But do what I tell you, anyway.”

“I don't feel like that's good enough today, Doc,” Graham said, shaking his head. “We're safer with you. Why leave us behind?”

“Whatever this is, it's a slow mover,” the Doctor said, exasperated. Edging into frantic. Full of nervous energy, Yaz thought, unsettled. More than usual. “It's settled. It's already been here a while. Nothing's going to happen to you tonight, just – be cautious. Get some rest. You humans, you're useless without your daily naps.”

“You only fling insults when you're trying to distract us,” Ryan said, arms crossed. Raindrops chased the curve of his cheek.

“I'm not trying to distract you, I am trying to _leave_ ,” she said, displeased. “You're perfectly safe here. I'll see you in the morning.”

“You keep – contradicting yourself,” Yaz said, watching, worry of her own churning in the pit of her stomach. Feeling static in the air. “Are we safe or are we not? It can't be both. What's wrong, Doctor?”

“You keep asking questions I don't have the answers to, that's what's wrong!” The Doctor took a sharp breath through her nose, looking surprised at herself. “And that's – wonderful,” she went on, slower. Breaths tight in her throat. “Human curiosity, forms the basis of everything from philosophy to space travel, it's remarkable, amazing, love it – ”

She cut herself off with a swallow, breathing too hard.

“Sorry,” she breathed, barely audible over the rain, looking everywhere but them. “That was – rude. That's me, still, I suppose. Rude and not ginger. D'you know, I've never been a ginger? Proper disappointing, I'll be honest, I keep hoping.”

“Doc.”

She looked up at Graham reluctantly, looking tired and bedraggled.

“What is really going on here?”

There was a long stretch of mutinous silence, broken only by the splatter of rain.

“I don't – _feel_ right,” she spat out finally, face twisting. “And I don't want to be around you.”

Translation: _I don't want you to see_.

“Right, well, unfortunately,” Graham said, stepping forward and offering her his hand. “That is not how friendship works. And we are friends, Doc?”

“Yeah,” she relented. Softening. A painful kind of wanting shining out from her eyes that Yaz didn't understand. But she didn't take his hand and she didn't step any closer. She took another sharp breath. “And that's why you've got to stay here. Get some rest. Eat a sandwich. You're perfectly safe here, as long as you stick together. I promise.” She mustered up a smile that was almost convincing. “Call me if you need me! I'll be back in the morning!”

The hand with Ryan's phone in it lifted into a jaunty salute and she turned to leave, skidding haphazardly down the steps without another word. Disappearing off into the night.

“She didn't even ask for a biscuit,” Ryan said, morose, in the silence that followed. “Something's really wrong.”

 

\---

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another short one! Like I said before, the past couple chapter were originally one, until I realized that was dumb and that it was getting too big - so consecutive updates are probably less likely from me from now on! This story won't be too long though, I don't imagine, and the ending and most of the bits in between are already written, so you won't have to wait too long!
> 
> (That being said, it is Finals Season, so - you know. Y'all know.)
> 
> Thank you so much for reading, and please don't hesitate to let me know what you thought!
> 
> \- W


	5. v.

\---

 

“Right,” Yaz said, amongst the comforting smell of what had to have once been Grace's vanilla candles, the flicker of those and a frankly alarming number of dinner candles set up to flood Graham and Ryan's living room with light. It was almost definitely a fire hazard. Any other day, there would have been another public safety lecture on the tip of her tongue, but the Doctor had insisted that they stay out of the shadows, and so –

Well. Here they were. All but barricaded indoors against a threat they knew nothing about. Against a storm that showed no signs of abating. In danger – or maybe not.

“That's that, then, I suppose,” she said, sounding steadier than she felt. Biting her lip to keep from glancing at the door.

“That's all our candles,” Ryan confirmed, stepping gingerly around a cluttered side-table. “Oh, god. I shouldn't be in here, I really shouldn't. One wrong move and I'll send us all up in flames.”

“Being anywhere but in here sort of defeats the point,” she said, sympathetically. “Just – step carefully?” She winced.

He looked back at her, pained.

“Sorry,” she said, the wince deepening. “You probably get that a lot, don't you.”

“Bit nicer than I usually get it,” he muttered, edging into the room with a grimace. “It's okay. D'you want a sandwich? Graham's making some.”

“Too nervous,” she replied, settling gingerly onto the sofa, avoiding the door, still. Rain pounded against the windows. Lightning flashed, in the distance. Scattered thunder, following. Her knuckles whitened into fists in her lap. “Maybe later.”

“He'll make too many, anyway.” He settled beside her gracelessly, deliberately casual. Elbows bent, hands crossed behind his head. “She'll be fine, you know. She's the Doctor.”

“Ugh,” she groaned, eyes closing, leaning back. “Get out of my head.”

“Not in your head, _you're_ in your head. And what's in your head is all over your face.”

“Cheers, Ryan.”

“I'm serious. You know she'll be fine, she always is.”

“You said it yourself,” Yaz said, eyes opening reluctantly. Warm, flickering light flooded the sitting room. She could hear Graham in the kitchen, puttering. Whistling absently, out of tune, scattered. If she hadn't felt sick with worry, it would have been almost cozy. “Something's not right. With everyone, but especially her.”

“And if anyone can deal with it, she can.”

“But,” she floundered for a moment, warring with herself. Wrestling with something she could barely articulate. “ _Why_?” she settled on, finally. It wasn't quite the right question.

Ryan looked at her, frowning, though it was only ever a mild expression, on his face. Like everyone else in her life, he could be frustratingly difficult to read, sometimes.

“What's this all about, actually?” he asked, after a moment. “'Cos it's not just about all this.”

She sat silently, mouth pressed together. Thunder cracked, behind her.

“You can tell me,” he said, leaning back into the sofa. “Not like I've got anything else to do, the Doctor took my mobile.”

“And YorkshireDollxx9 with it.”

His expression turned chagrined.

“Oh, god.”

She huffed half a laugh through her nose, but it ended in a sigh.

“Come on,” he said.

“It just,” she said. Stopped. Thought. “It just feels like things are being dug up. Questions I had. Doubts. And it feels – wrong to have them, almost, but – but that's wrong, too.” She shook her head, teeth catching the edge of her lip again. “Sounds daft out loud.” She swallowed. “But it's a little bit mad, isn't it? Jumping into a spaceship with a stranger, no questions asked? No strings attached?”

“We watched her save us all,” he reasoned, still sprawled casually beside her. “I've got questions, just like you, but isn't that the most important part?”

“We also watched her blow someone up,” she countered, pulling her feet up under her so she was sitting cross-legged. “Earlier, I – I told her there was no other way and I believed it. But – we've all seen what she's like, what she can do. Don't you think she could have found another way?”

“She gave Charlie a choice,” he pointed out. He continued, quieter. “And she didn't enjoy it.”

“Of course not.” Here was where she kept getting stuck. Her brain wouldn't move past it. Didn't want to admit it. Couldn't bear to admit it. “But you've seen her face sometimes,” she said. Hating herself, just a bit. Saying the words aloud would make them real, and they tasted like betrayal on her tongue. “When we're facing things down. When she thinks you aren’t looking.”

He said nothing, but his face turned away, just slightly.

“It's always a smile,” she said, feeling ill, feeling pieces of a puzzle sliding together that she didn't want, didn't need.

He drew in a breath. “But not a nice one,” he said quietly. Agreeing.

“Where did she come from?” Yaz whispered. “Why does she do the things she does, why bring us along at all?”

Once the questions started, they didn't stop, was the problem. She could feel them, what felt like thousands of them, pressed up against her insides, against her heart. Sour and frantic, because for all the doubts and fears she could feel bubbling up to the surface, the suspicion coating her tongue like a blanket, like a shadow, betrayal bitter in her mouth, the overwhelming feeling at the core of her was just – worry. Flickering, like a candle.

“It's just like Graham said.” Ryan frowned in the warm light, brows drawing together. “She's lonely. She just wants some mates, to take with her on adventures.”

“But why?” she asked again, fists still clenched in her lap. A cottony ache was blossoming behind her eyelids, tension-borne. The seed of it had been planted for what felt like hours. “It can't be that simple. No one's that simple.”

“You're not wrong,” Graham said, startling them both. He smiled faintly as they jumped, stepping into the sitting room, shaking off the gloom of the hall beyond. A platter of sandwiches in hand that he placed carefully on the coffee table, between the candles. Pickle and cheese. “And you're not daft for askin'. But you won't get any answers that way. It's the wrong question.”

“Cryptic,” Ryan said, eyebrows raised pointedly, snagging a sandwich from the platter.

Graham looked back at him, exasperated, sitting down across from them in a patterned, well-loved armchair that had to be a favourite. He all but blended in to it.

“I'm just saying, the question isn't why, or where. It's _who_.” He settled back further. “And who you are isn't where you're from, or why you act. It's what you do,” he said simply.

“Yeah,” Ryan said. “Not really feelin' like that cleared anything up or made it less cryptic.”

Graham didn't roll his eyes, but it looked like a near thing. His lips flattened instead. “We already know who the Doctor is,” he said. “She's shown us, hasn't she?”

“But – ” Yaz frowned, legs still tucked under her. She contemplated the plate of sandwiches thoughtfully. The smell of pickle was bright and sour under her nose. Familiar. “Is that really enough for you? Don't you want to know more? Doesn't it worry you, that she hasn't told us anything?”

He shrugged, picking up a sandwich of his own. “She'll tell us when she feels like it, I reckon. Gotta be a reason why she don't like to talk about it, and I don't know about you, but I don't fancy it's all that pleasant.” His expression softened. “We have to let her be more than what we see. That's what friends do. Proper friends.”

That comforting smell turned a hair too sharp. Her stomach twinged. “Even if it puts us in danger?”

He took a nonchalant bite of sandwich, chewing thoughtfully. “Hasn't yet, has it? And,” he swallowed, leaning forward. “I'll ask you this. Do you think, even for a second, that the Doctor would ever do anything to put us all in danger if she thought she could help it?”

Despite everything, she thought, swallowing back the sour suspicion that had been creeping up her throat so slowly, the answer was almost too easy.

“Of course not,” she said, believing it utterly. “Of course she wouldn't.”

“Good enough for me,” Graham said. “I trust her to keep us safe. I trust that she cares about us. That doesn't mean I don't question her, or disagree with her. It's like I said, she's more than she looks, and I don't half wonder sometimes, about all what she's seen and done. But all that comes after.”

“You're full of advice today,” Ryan said, before she could reply. “And for once, it's not bad.”

“Put a sandwich in it.”

“And cross, too.” Ryan grabbed another sandwich, eyes shining a bit, like they always did when he was engaging in deliberate provocation. For whatever incomprehensible reason. He'd backed off of it lately, she'd noticed. Calmed. They'd all been a little more settled. Before they'd arrived back home. Before the rain.

Oh.

“That's it,” she said, uncrossing her legs, feeling the blood rush back into her feet, heart pounding in her throat. Head aching, behind her eyes. “Oh my god, that's it.”

“It?” Ryan demanded as she stood abruptly, eyes flickering to the precarious spread of candles covering the sitting room's eclectic surfaces. “What's it?”

“The – the – ” There was no way to articulate it clearly. “There's something,” she said, insistent, blinking quickly, thinking. Her hands set out in front of her, like she could grasp the problem from the air. “Something – in the atmosphere, in the rain, I don't know. Making people cross, making people – ” Oh, god. “ – vulnerable,” she finished, breathing hard. Hands dropping to her sides. Worry pressing down on her chest like a physical weight.

She looked to the door.

“Sorry,” Ryan said, looking gently sceptical as she glanced back. “You think – you think the rain. Is making people cross. And that it's aliens that done it?”

“All those deaths,” she said, shivering. “Heart failure, that's – stress, isn't it? And the suicides. This is something mental, it's something that gets into everyone's brains, stirs it all up, makes people cross. Makes people stressed. Makes people – hurt.”

“I'm following,” Graham said, hesitantly. “But how can we know?”

“Look at us,” she insisted. “We were getting along just fine until the minute we stepped out of the TARDIS.”

“Yaz, me and Graham argue all the time,” Ryan pointed out, but he was frowning again. The casual bent of his arms belied the tension she could see in his shoulders. “And it's not like all of this hasn't been comin', we've had questions right from the start.”

“You're not listening to me,” she breathed, feeling something grey and frantic in the pit of her stomach. Foreign. Unwanted, but she couldn't banish it, couldn't tease it out, even though she knew now what it was. “We're all being affected by this, whatever it is, we're not _thinking_ right.”

“Don't exactly feel like I'm not thinking right,” Graham ventured.

“ _Listen to me_ ,” she insisted again, fists clenching at her side. She took a breath through her nose, let it out through her mouth on a count of four. Another. Another. There was a better way than this. She wasn't panicky, as a rule. She held anxiety close, she always had, cradled it to her chest and kept it there, festering, but she didn't panic. She had no room for panic. “Your head,” she said, calmer. “Does it hurt?”

Graham's lips had pressed together again. Sandwich forgotten in his lap.

“Tiny bit,” Ryan admitted.

“We're all tired, though,” Graham offered, worry finally peeking through the back of his gaze. “It's been a long few days.”

“This is something different,” she said. “It has to be, I know it does.”

“But the Doc is psychic.” Graham frowned. “If we were all being interfered with, wouldn't she be able to tell? She's proper sensitive to that sort of rubbish, it drops her like a hat the instant she runs into it. Stands to reason she must be able to fend it off too, keep it out. Better than we could, anyway.”

“It's been here a while,” Yaz replied, heart racing. “That's what she said, it's playing a long game. And you saw it, she's distracted.” She swallowed. “She can't kick it out if she doesn't know it's there.”

“Phone her,” Ryan said, finally looking as worried as she needed him to be. “Let her know, maybe – maybe she can tell, somehow.”

Yaz fished out her phone from her back pocket, fingers trembling despite herself. But she was good in a crisis, trained to be good in a crisis, trained to think past fear and worry and panic and her thumb found Ryan's number with ease. She dialled and held her phone up to her ear. Waited. Waited. Dial tone.

She swallowed.

“Try again,” Graham said, nearly drowned out by a roll of thunder. The rain was still a vehement staccato against the glass. “Maybe the line's busy.”

“Who else is the Doctor calling?” Ryan demanded. “Her other set of secret mates in Shrewsbury?”

He was right, but she tried again anyway. Waited. Waited. Dial tone. Waited. Waited. Dial tone.

“I'll keep trying,” she breathed, sitting back down on the sofa, heart pounding in her ears, rain pounding against the glass. “I'll keep trying, maybe – ”

“No, love.” Graham stood, placing his uneaten sandwich back on the platter. He looked across to her, kind and worried and grim. “There's no point, and you know it.”

She looked down at her phone, frowning.

“She said she'd be back,” Graham said, practical. In a resigned sort of way, though, again, the bent of his mouth was kind. “All we can do is wait.”

Everything he was, he was because he had to be, Yaz thought tiredly, still staring into the dark screen of her phone. That was its own kind of burden, probably. She couldn't fault him, even though a part of her wanted to, wanted to reject that exhausted rationality, that patient, devastating reason.

“I hate waiting,” she said, eventually. “I hate – being still, when there's something I could do.”

“And quite right, too, but right now,” Graham said quietly, hands in his pockets, “there is nothing we can do.”

Ryan nudged her with his shoulder, still tense with worry, looking across at Graham with something in his eyes that she didn't recognize.

“That's the thing about having friends, though,” he said, after a moment. He glanced down at her. “At least you don't have to wait alone.”

 

\---

 

She hadn't slept on someone else's sofa since Sophie Jones' fourteenth birthday sleepover, which had ended in disaster and tears and a year's worth of social ostracisation that she'd never really, honestly, recovered from, but it was different somehow, at Ryan and Graham's. Far less awkward, if slightly uncomfortable. Sleeping in jeans, though, she thought, opening her eyes to a pounding at the door and the ever-present patter of rain on the glass. That was always a bad idea.

There was tension at the back of her neck and that stretched cotton ache at the back of her eyes, but the room still glowed with the warmth of the tea lights they'd left set up on the coffee table, watery daylight trickling in from the window.

Daylight. And a knock at the door.

Yaz sprang to her feet, borrowed blankets pooling on the floor beside her, and she stumbled over to the entrance, half-awake. Slid the lock and pulled the door open, heart hammering in her throat, feeling more alert with every second.

“Yaz!”

“Doctor,” she said, relief cool in the pit of her chest. Rain from outside spat at her, cold and sharp. The Doctor grinned at her, soaked to the skin and shivering, clearly having forgotten completely the existence of the key under the mat. “You're back.”

“'Course I'm back,” the Doctor said, grin falling in confusion. “Why wouldn't I be back? I did say the morning, didn't I?”

“You – ” Yaz began, a fruitless kind of frustration starting to simmer in the place where her worry had been festering.

“You wouldn't pick up the phone,” Ryan finished for her, looming over her shoulder, still dressed in what he apparently thought passed for pyjamas but were, in actuality, a poor excuse to parade around his favourite rugby team.

“Ah,” the Doctor said, looking sheepish. “Ran out of battery.” She deposited the phone in his waiting hand. “Thought about sonicing it, but there was a very small but technically possible chance it would have wiped all your data, so – ”

He snatched the phone away.

“Thanks, Doctor,” he said, pocketing it in relief. “Glad you're back.”

“You're soaking wet,” Yaz said critically, drawing back to let her into the hall, shivering at the chill wafting in with her. “Were you outside all night? Why didn't you take an umbrella?”

“Outside is a very broad term,” the Doctor said. She was still, Yaz noticed with resignation, beset by that odd, frantic energy. Strung tightly, even paler than yesterday. Looking like she wanted nothing more than to escape herself. She removed her coat and hung it on one of the hooks by the door, pausing only briefly to observe the way it dripped audibly onto the floor. “But, yes, I suppose. Broadly speaking, I was – outside. Investigating. Hold my blender?”

She pressed the blender in Yaz's hands, slick with rainwater, and paced further into Ryan and Graham's home, heedless of her boots on the hardwood. She left watery footprints and bits of grass and soil in her wake. Ryan eyed them with trepidation.

Yaz set the blender on the side table in the entranceway, on top of a stack of bills and an empty crisp packet. “Okay,” she said, following the Doctor's path with her eyes, meeting her gaze only briefly as she spun around and paced back towards them. She stepped closer to the sitting room deliberately, herding all three of them away from the entrance and its lingering chill. “Did you find anything? Because we – ”

“Broadly speaking,” the Doctor said, again, still moving, a qualifying finger raised in the air, “not exactly, but in a narrower sense, yes, I definitely did find quite a lot, only it's context-dependent and I haven't got much context, you see, hard to tell what's most important – ”

“Morning, Doc,” Graham said, as he made it down the stairs. “See, Yaz? Told you we'd be alright. How was Sheffield by night, Doc? Find anything?”

She glanced at him from where she was inspecting their wall calendar, fingers leaving damp imprints on the paper. A brief pause in what was beginning to feel more and more like a rampage. “Like I was telling these two, broadly speaking, not a lot, more narrowly, quite a bit – ”

“Because we think we might have stumbled onto a bit of the mystery ourselves,” he offered, nodding resignedly to himself when she ignored him entirely.

“ – three gang fights, a feral cat colony, several more abandoned buildings, and – ” she paused again, leaning in “ – did you know you've got a whole family of hedgehogs in the park across the way? I've named them all Dave.”

“Doctor,” Ryan said, watching her trail of watery destruction with a unique combination of awe and disapproval. “Have you been drinking coffee?”

“No, just running on very little sleep and quite a bit of panic,” she said, smiling tightly. “Not that you should panic. Definitely don't panic, actually, I think that's a rule – ”

“Maybe you should take a nap, Doc,” Graham suggested over his shoulder, giving up for the moment and heading towards the kitchen. There was the clatter of tea being pulled from the cupboard as he disappeared from view. The ensuing click of the stove, as he turned on the gas. No kettle to make the process quick.

The Doctor made a face at the suggestion, balking. “No, no, there's still a mystery here, I can't stop – ”

“Can't stay still, more like,” Yaz interjected finally, giving up trying to tiptoe around the subject. Worry sharpened her tone of voice. “Doctor, Graham's right. You've been out all night.” _With almost nothing to show for it_. “How are you gonna help Sheffield like this? You're soaking wet and about to vibrate into a wall. You should take a rest.”

“Nah, I don't do rest,” the Doctor insisted far too mildly, far too pale, far too _false_ , making the point poorly with a finger jabbed haphazardly in their direction. In blatant contradiction to what she'd insisted tirelessly yesterday morning, but maybe that was beside the point now. Yaz frowned.

“We've all been talking, though – ”

“No, listen to me,” she was moving again, pacing the length of the hallway, altering course arbitrarily into the sitting room, spinning on her heels, hands gesticulating wildly. It was making Yaz dizzy just watching. “I was right, there is something – _odd_ going on here. In addition to the Daves, I tracked down more of those spheres we found earlier, melted a few of them down, 'cos I could, but I still can't figure out what they're _for._ ” She pushed some of her bedraggled hair out her eyes, making a face at the dampness.

“Doctor,” Yaz tried.

“It's clearly amplifying something, but I – there's something more to all this, I think. You're being invaded, but quietly. Picked off, slowly. Don't like it. Can't quite figure out what's going on, don't like that either. This brain is too busy, too crowded, that's the problem, can't slow down my thoughts long enough to hang on to any of them, you know, I've probably stumbled onto the answer already and forgot about it, absolutely _useless_ – ”

“Right, here's the thing, though,” she interjected again, fruitlessly. The Doctor bowled right over her, pacing, half-hunched over herself. Talking so quickly there was almost no gap between the words, frantic, breathless.

“ – meanwhile, you lot are in incredible danger, that much is obvious, and if I could just _think_ – ”

“ _Doctor_ ,” she said, one last time, stripping the worry out of her voice and replacing it with the authoritative, de-escalatory tone she'd been trained to use on potentially hostile civilians. “It's not your fault. Look, we've been thinkin', what if whatever is behind all this is interfering with everyone, psychically?

That stopped the Doctor in her tracks. She paused mid-pace, hands dropping, in the middle of the sitting room. Exhaled shakily.

“Psychically?” she asked. Gripped, for the moment, by the possibility. “What makes you say that?”

“All of the deaths, the – the suicide epidemic, the heart failures, it's all to do with stress,” Yaz said, watching carefully. “The people on the bus, they were all cross, miserable. And we have been, too, ever since we got home. It's not – normal.”

“Psychic interference,” the Doctor muttered, frowning. Still. For the moment. She fished the sphere they'd found out of her right pocket, tossed it up and caught it, staring intently. Eyes sharp. “Either generated or amplified by semi-organic tech. Oh, you might be on to something. Ten points,” she said absently, quickening again. “But to what end, what's the point of it all? Why the storm, why the shadows, what are we _missing_?” She ground the sphere into her forehead, face scrunching into a frown. “Whatever is here is intangible,” she said, “and old, and familiar and very, _very sneaky_ , or maybe I'm just saying that to give myself an excuse for not figuring it out yet, you know, I think I used to be better at this, always been a bit thick, not afraid to admit that, but at least back in the day I could _think in a straight line_ – ”

“That's just it though,” Yaz said, cutting her off again, hair on the back of her neck standing straight on end. Outside, lightning crashed nearby and the Doctor bit back a wince. “Doctor, what if it's interfering with you too?”

The Doctor pulled away from the sphere, holding it out at arms length. Looking, Yaz thought tiredly, distinctly chagrined.

“Ah. Hadn't considered that,” she said, pausing, knees buckling. Ryan stepped closer, brows knitting together, but she stumbled away from him toward the sofa, sinking down onto it slowly, free hand fluttering. She hunched over, forearms resting on her knees, swallowing back a moan. “Still an idiot, then.”

“Awful hard on yourself, Doc,” Graham said, approaching with tea in hand. He crouched with a wince and reached for her wrist. “No need for that.”

“Ah, ah,” she said, flinching away from his touch, face crumpled in pain. “You're _feelin'_ too loud.”

“And that's the problem, innit,” he said, kindly. “It's like you said. Reckon whatever's wrong here is something psychic. Not your fault it's messing with you more than us.”

“Don't need to be grandadded, Graham, I've _been_ a grandad.”

“Not going to unpack that statement right now,” he shook his head, pressing the tea into her hands. He took the sphere from her gingerly and set it on the coffee table. “Drink your tea. We'll get you into some dry clothes. Then we'll figure all this out. Together. No more running off like a sick cat.” He glanced around briefly, resigned. “And running back around like a soaking wet maniac.”

Her hands were shaking around the mug.

“C'mon, Doc,” he said, and if Yaz hadn't been so worried she might have taken a moment to marvel at Graham's ability to granddad a thousands-year old psychic alien with more secrets than there were stars in the sky. “What's wrong?”

“Head,” she said finally, tersely. “That's all. Could be worse. Just can't – _think_ right. Things are being – stirred up. I've seen this before.” Her knuckles whitened. “Or maybe not. I'm worried.”

“Anything we can do?”

She shook her head, lips drawn tightly. “Nah. Besides, I need to – ”

Yaz frowned. Outside, lightning crashed again, too close. The house rattled and the candles wavered and shook, flickering. A few extinguished themselves and the warm glow of the sitting room grew dimmer, thinner. The Doctor hunched over, air hissing in through her teeth.

“ – need to figure this out,” the Doctor spat, shuddering. “ _Ah._ ”

“Think what you need's a paracetamol, mate,” Ryan said, concerned.

She shook her head, standing unsteadily, still half hunched over herself. Tea abandoned precariously on the edge of the coffee table. “No,” she said. She swallowed painfully. “No, there's – I can't – ”

“Just sit still,” Yaz implored, extending a hand, frustration bubbling up at the back of her throat. “Just for a moment, just sit.”

“I _can't_ ,” the Doctor snapped, ignoring her, swiping a hand down her face. “I can't, just – ” But she twisted her head, gasping, and the words that followed were incomprehensible, sharp like shards of glass, pitched high like it was shattering apart. Like a kind of terrible, monstrous song. One piece of an impossible chord, too grand for the human ear.

They all flinched, together, and the Doctor paused, stumbling. Frowned deeply, and that was never a good sign. “Translation circuit's stopped working,” she muttered, in English. “What – ”

“Translation circuit?” Ryan interjected, looking spooked. Shoulders sharp and tense. “What do you mean, translation circuit, aren't you always speaking English anyway?”

“Easier not to, hate English verb tenses,” she said, a hand out for balance, face trapped in a wince. “ _Ah_ , I don't – understand what's happening, this is – telepathic interference – ” She swallowed painfully. “Impeding my connection to the TARDIS, oh, whoever's doing this is in _such trouble_ – ”

“Doc,” Graham said, reaching a hand out, pulling it back when she swatted at it irritably. “What's – ”

She groaned again, fists moving to her hair in frustration. “Don't like this,” she muttered, voice growing louder as she looked inexplicably to the ceiling, blank but for the shadows creeping in the corner. “Think you're right,” she shuddered. “I am being _tampered with_!” She took a deep breath, still looking accusingly at the ceiling, and crashed to the ground in a tangle of limbs and water-logged fabric.

Yaz shouted in surprise, heart hammering in her throat, too shocked to cushion her fall. Ryan stuck his hands out, comically late.

“Oh, my days,” he said, surprised.

“Oh dear,” Graham muttered tiredly, the least perturbed of all of them, crouching down beside where she'd crumpled, not quite unconscious. “C'mon, Doc. Still with us?”

Her eyes opened easily, but it took a worryingly long moment for her to rouse.

“Graham,” Yaz said, stepping closer, heart still pounding. Worry, still sour at the back of her mouth, but she was trained for things like this, at least. Sort of. And she'd always dealt best with anxiety by keeping herself busy. By focusing on a problem, on something she could solve, something she could try to fix with her own hands. This wasn't quite, she thought, teeth catching her lip bitterly, what she'd had in mind. “I've got first aid.”

“Not sure this is the kind of thing first aid can fix,” he warned. “Doc? Doc?”

“Wilf?” she eventually croaked, eyes glazed, palpably confused. “Hurts, Wilf.”

Graham's lips pressed together. “I'm sorry,” he said. “I'm not Wilf.”

“Mm. No,” she muttered, subdued, eyes still wandering. Twin trails of red began the slow creep from her nose to her upper lip. Her blood was thinner than human blood, Yaz couldn't help but notice, morbidly. Rustier, leaning towards orange. “Suppose you wouldn't be. Would you like a jelly baby?”

Her breaths were hitched, wrong. Fast and sharp. Graham frowned.

“No,” he said carefully, reaching for her wrist. “No, we're alright, ta.”

“ _Ah,_ ” she flinched away from his grasp but he held on gently, grimacing. “Please, I can't – _I'm sorry_ , I'm so sorry, please– ”

“Just for a moment, Doc,” he said quietly. “Don't be sorry.”

“It's hurting her, Graham,” Ryan protested, frowning. The space between the sitting room and the hall was too narrow for all of them to crouch, and he loomed above him, a nervous silhouette. “Skin to skin contact.”

“Fetch me the kitchen mitts,” Graham asked, ignoring him.

“What?”

“Kitchen mitts,” he said again. “Quickly, too, if you don't mind.”

Ryan stalled for a moment, exasperated, but Graham failed to elaborate.

“ _Quickly,_ ” he said, the Doctor's face scrunching miserably under his careful grip, right above her pulse.

“Alright,” Ryan muttered, stalking off. Yaz watched him go, too preoccupied to be puzzled by the request. She took another step forward and crouched down on the Doctor's other side, frowning. Her knees sank into the rug. Heart pounding, still. Which –

“Heartbeat,” she said. “That's what you're checking?”

“Heartbeats,” Graham said, finally releasing the Doctor's wrist. “I think. Very fast, but I don't know what's normal, is the thing.”

“Pupils?” Yaz leaned in closer, trying to catch the Doctor's wandering gaze. She looked clammy, too, but she'd also just been out in the rain. Probably Graham was right, much as it rubbed her a bit wrong to admit it. This was beyond anything basic first aid could fix. Beyond anything they could fix. Connected, somehow, to everything happening around them, and the one person in the midst of solving it had just been knocked spectacularly out of action.

“Not good,” Graham said, leaning back on his heels. “Wish I could say different. You can probably tell better than me, but – well.” _Worried_ , Yaz thought. Absence weighing heavy on his shoulders. A space that should have been filled.

“I'm so sorry,” the Doctor rasped again, eerily.

Graham closed his eyes, just briefly. Swallowed.

“Kitchen mitts,” Ryan interrupted, skidding to a halt in the door way, brandishing them in front of him. “Couldn't remember which drawer, sorry. What are they for though, Graham? Shouldn't we – should we – ” His shoulders sank as Graham took the proffered mitts with a nod. A grimace crossed his face. “Nobody we can call, is there. Nothing we can do. A&E can't fix this.”

“ _No initials_ ,” the Doctor muttered vehemently, shuddering. Far from them. Though, really, she hadn't been near for quite some time.

“Think we're it, son,” Graham said, dawning the mitts with his lips pressed together. “C'mon,” he said, looking up at them, grim, determined. It was just them three, now, Yaz thought with a chill. Left to sort out the mess. “Put your hands in your sleeves and give me some help.”

 

\---

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sighhhhhh finals week is upon us, so please excuse any errors (grammatical or otherwise) you might find here - I'm so caffeinated I feel a bit like I might also vibrate into the fifth dimension with the Doctor, so my distinct apologies. This is very - talky, there's a lot of talking, but it's for Reasons, so I think that's okay.
> 
> Again, thank you so much for reading, and thank you so much for your lovely comments! They really make my day, and I dearly appreciate the feedback. 
> 
> Hope you enjoy and the holidays find you well! More on the way (only a chapter or so more, I should think)
> 
> Best,
> 
> \- W


	6. vi.

 

\---

“I'm back!” Yaz called, stripping off her coat gingerly as she stepped through the door, wincing at the water that collected at her feet. Her trainers were soaked. At least her uniform boots had been water-proofed. She unpinned her hair from the bun at the back of her head and winced at the tension in her neck. Worlds colliding. It had been so long since her last shift, she'd gone to work half afraid she'd forgotten how, the protocols to follow, what she'd been dealing with before she'd left. There were never any shifts she had to worry about when they were running for their lives on alien planets. But this was all – _personal_ , all mixed up in what had once been 'real life' and what was now –

– something altogether different.

But it was just a morning shift, on Mondays. And her superiors had been so busy they'd hardly noticed she was there – typical, though she was loath to admit it. She was better at her job than half the blokes she'd graduated with, more meticulous, more thorough, but none of it mattered, even during an emergency. The end of the world could arrive, and she'd still be stuck issuing parking tickets.

Today, it had almost been a blessing though. Anyone else who'd been as distracted as she had been all morning would have been written up, told off, but she'd kept under the radar.

And she knew people in records.

“No one has died,” she said, stepping into the sitting room, locking eyes with Ryan, who shifted in Graham's armchair to look at her. “Not since we got back, not a single person. And we were averaging one or two a day, before. I've looked at the data myself.”

“Afternoon to you, too” he said, standing. “Why? Why's it dropped off now?”

“No idea,” she said. “But it's got to mean something. Just not sure what.” She wrapped her arms around herself and stepped closer, reluctantly, further into the room. The scene was almost familiar, but the last time the Doctor had been laid out on Ryan and Graham's sofa, she had seemed almost – peaceful. Exhausted, but still larger than life, resting calmly. Rebooting. Her sleep now – if you could call it that – was far from peaceful.

“Has she woken?” she asked, glancing away from the Doctor, who looked small and unfamiliar in a set of Grace's old pinstriped pyjamas, draped in blankets that she kept kicking to her feet, hair dried in haphazard waves. To the window beyond the sofa. To the greyness of the outdoors. Still raining.

“No,” Ryan said, shaking his head. His gaze was fixed on the Doctor, restless in unconsciousness, bone white and tense. She'd been half-awake, up to a point, incoherent and – Yaz rubbed absently at a small bruise blossoming on her forearm – combative. Confused. It had taken all three of them to wrestle her onto the sofa, and she hadn't gone without a fight. But she'd finally dropped off, or – given up, maybe, was more accurate. Before Yaz had left for work. “No, not really. She talks sometimes, but I think she's just dreaming.”

“Dreaming about what?”

He shrugged, the line of his shoulders tense, worry twisting his hands, though his face stayed smooth. “No idea. All sorts of things I've never heard before. People, maybe. Bodies of water. Ponds, rivers. Roses. It's all nonsense.” His face twisted. “The rest of it's all in – in that other language.” He shuddered. “Sounds like shattered glass. I can barely listen to it.”

“Must be what she grew up speaking.” Yaz sighed. “Whatever that is.”

“Are you still salty about all that?”

“Aren't you?” She shook her head. Let out another breath. “I'm not, not really. Not right now, anyway. I'm – ”

But she trailed off, the words sticking in her throat.

“Odd, seeing her asleep,” he admitted quietly, picking up on what she hadn't said. “Shouldn't be. Do you think she ever actually does it? Y'know, besides when she's in mortal danger.”

“I dunno,” Yaz said, arms crossed, heart hammering dully in her throat. “Only ever seen her do it when she's in trouble somehow.”

When they'd first met her, of course, after she'd fallen from the sky through the top of the train. On the Tsuranga, and then after, too, after they'd – well, 'escaped', but that wasn't quite right, was it. They'd all eventually made their way back to the TARDIS, motion-sick from teleporting and exhausted, and she'd told them to make themselves comfortable for a few hours while she regrew part of her ectospleen. Then she'd passed out face first on the console floor and stayed that way for a good fifteen hours.

They'd tried to fix it on the Tsuranga, Yaz remembered, feeling a bit ill. But she'd never sat still long enough to let them.

“Are you worried?” she asked, knowing even as the words left her mouth that the question wasn't fair. Of course he was. They all were.

But he didn't take offense. “Yeah,” he said, slowly. “Not actually that surprised, though.” He looked down to her when she frowned. “Can't expect everyone to hold it together all the time. That's not fair to you, or them.” Softer. “No one's invincible. Not even her.”

He knew, better than most, she realized with a guilty start.

“Well. She'll be alright,” she breathed out. Reassuring him, as well as herself, probably. “We'll fix all of this. Yeah?”

He smiled, and it was a solid effort. “Yeah. 'Course.”

“Come on,” she said. “Where's – ”

But before she could finish the question, it was answered by Graham himself, barging through the door. The wind howled behind him.

“This storm,” he complained, shaking his head, discarding his jacket with distaste and hanging it on the hook. “Is it ever gonna end?”

“Graham,” Ryan said. “Where'd you go? You left proper quick, mate.”

“I know a guy, used to be a regular on route 7,” he said, breathing hard. He fished a handful of crumpled-looking papers from the inside of his jacket and stepped closer to them. “Works down at the local real estate office.”

Ryan blinked back at him.

“Are we...moving?” he asked, frowning.

“ _No_ ,” Graham protested, waving the papers in his hand. “Your nan, she always says – well, she always used to tell me – when you've got a problem, _start with a question_.” He waited, face falling when Yaz and Ryan only looked at him, blankly. “So,” he looked to the ceiling momentarily, exasperated, “I asked a question. How many properties does our good friend Mr. Drake actually manage?”

 _Oh_.

“And?” Yaz held her hand out for the papers, pulse thrumming. Graham handed them over grimly.

“Seems our Mr. Drake is quite the real estate mogul. He doesn't just manage places, he's been buying them up, too.”

“But,” she frowned over the photocopied records, squinting down at the text. At the grainy but unmistakeable picture. “This is the office building we were in yesterday.”

“And your flat, and half a dozen others. A smattering of abandoned buildings too, all within a five kilometre radius. All snatched up within the last month or so. Under his name and everything, he's not that slick.”

“Oh my god,” Ryan said. “I don't – why, though?”

“Easy access,” Yaz muttered, gaze still locked on the records, frowning. “To keep a better eye on his victims? Or maybe it's a proximity thing. Is anyone else getting the impression that maybe whatever's doing this is – snacking on people, somehow? Consuming their bad feelings, is that – can aliens do that?”

There was no one they could ask.

Ryan shuddered in her peripheral vision. “Not liking any of this,” he said.

“And the abandoned buildings” she continued, “for – for storing those spheres, maybe. Couldn't just keep 'em anywhere, people would notice them. Do you have a map of Sheffield, Graham?”

“What am I, my grandfather?” he protested. “No, I don't have a map. What do I need a map for, I grew up here. And even I can use those – that – you know, that map in my phone.”

“Okay, alright,” she said, blinking. She folded the records neatly and passed them back to him. “I was just going to try to sketch out the addresses, that's all. See if we could find the epicentre of all this.”

“Oh,” he said, mollified. “Right. Well, I don't have one. Could pop down to the shops, if you need. Could try to do it on my phone, too. Running out of battery, though.”

“Easier to see on a big map,” Ryan said. “I've got to go to work in a minute, I'll get one on my way home.”

“Alright,” Yaz said, feeling something in her back relax, even if it was only slightly. She liked plans. Plans, she could do. Even the semblance of them. “In the meantime, we could – we could try to see if the Doctor recognizes any of these properties. She must have been in some, she came home with more spheres.”

“You won't get a proper answer out of her,” Ryan said, shaking his head.

“Any change?” Graham asked.

“Nah. She's right out of it. Quieter, now.”

There was no way to know whether that was a good thing or a bad thing, but it sat nervously in the base of her throat, anyway.

Graham sighed. “Wishing we had a nurse roundabout now,” he said, quietly.

“Yeah,” Ryan agreed. He placed a tentative hand on Graham's shoulder, who froze, but didn't move. Not wanting to ruin the moment. Yaz only watched, silently. “Well,” Ryan said finally. After the moment had come and gone. He removed his hand to shove it casually into his pocket. “Gotta go to work now, I guess.” He shook his head. “Worlds colliding, right Yaz? Never thought I'd have to interrupt the middle of an alien invasion to pick up a shift.”

“Yeah,” she agreed. Waited a beat. “I hate it, actually. Spent the whole morning worrying.”

He looked at her wryly. “Well, now it's my turn.”

“See you this evening,” Graham said, clapping his shoulder briefly as he turned to go. “Don't worry too much. And bring home a map!”

Ryan only rolled his eyes, but it was fond. The rain had finally got to him, to the extent that he bothered to put on a hat as he left, snatching it off the hall table. “Laters!”

In jest. Or maybe not. Yaz let herself smile, just a bit, but it faded quickly.

“Now what do we do?” she asked.

“You won't like it,” Graham warned, settling down into his armchair, into the space Ryan had vacated. “I think all we can do now is wait.”

She exhaled through her nose, quietly frustrated. “You're right,” she said, stepping closer to the sofa. The Doctor shifted, just slightly. “I don't like it at all.”

“Doesn't your job involve lots of waiting, at the moment? You're still probationary, right?”

“Yeah,” she said, eyebrows raising. “That's why I can't stand it. I'd die for something to do that's actually half a challenge.”

“Someone's gotta issue the parking tickets.”

She pressed her lips together, frowning. Absently reached for the Doctor's wrist, trying to keep her thoughts and feelings as muted as possible. The conversation topic, admittedly, was making the endeavour rather difficult. “Don't see why it always has to be me,” she muttered, the Doctor's impossible pulse beating under her careful grasp.

Only –

“Graham,” she said. Feeling the blood leave her face. “Graham, I think her heartbeats are out of sync.”

He frowned. “What – ”

“Feel it, here,” she grabbed his hand and manhandled it over the Doctor's wrist, ignoring her flinch, the strangled moan. It was his grief, she thought only briefly, absently. His grief that she must have been feeling. “One of them's too fast.”

“Or too slow,” he said grimly. “No way to tell.”

“What do we do?”

“Nothing we can do, is there?” He dropped her wrist, running a worried hand through his hair. “What happened to those other poor sods, it's happening to her too, isn't it. And all them other blokes died.”

She could only look back at him, lips pressed together.

“So – what?” He looked back at her, helplessly. “Spiritual cleanse? Tinfoil hat? What keeps them out?”

That was the question of the hour, wasn't it. Yaz ground her palm into her forehead, frowning. The rain pounded overhead, the air around them thick and murky, even though it was only midday. She missed the sun like she missed an old friend, missed being able to think clearly, missed the brightness of actual day, the sort of clarity you only got in the light.

 _Stay out of the shadows_.

Oh.

“Light,” Yaz said, heart pounding, “lights, lots of light, it's – shadows, maybe, she was talkin' about shadows earlier.” She sprinted to her bag, socks slipping on the hardwood, dug through it to find her torch. “Get some more candles up!”

“It's the middle of the day!”

“Still gloomy as hell in here though!”

There had to be something better than this, she thought desperately, heaving her torch up and setting its brightness as high as it could go. She winced and shone it right at the Doctor's face, throwing her pale features into stark, hollow light, chasing the shadows away. The Doctor flinched into the sofa cushions, face twisting, but her eyes didn't open.

“Oh, come on,” Yaz whispered, waiting. She reached for the Doctor's wrist again, the uneven thump of her heartbeats ominous against her careful grasp. “Come on.”

Something better than this, better than a tinfoil hat. They couldn't fix all of this by shining a torch at it, but maybe it could buy them a minute or two while she tried to think. Something better, she thought, heart still pounding frantically. Something better.

Tinfoil hat.

“Of course,” she said quietly. Best tinfoil hat in the universe, shielded and protected and all sorts of other things that she didn't understand. “The TARDIS. Graham!”

He came bowling around the corner, matches in hand. “What?” he said, skidding to a halt. “What is it? I've got more matches out the kitchen drawer, you said more candles – ”

“It's not good enough, we have to take her to the TARDIS!”

“The TARDIS?” His face fell marginally. “That's all the way out by your flat, you're joking.”

“I'm not joking, I think it could help!”

He put the package of matches into his pocket and scrubbed a hand down his face. “Yeah, alright,” he said begrudgingly. “You're probably right, aren't you.”

“I am a lot of the time, honestly.” She adjusted her grip on the torch, focusing on the flutter of the Doctor's heartbeats under her grasp. “And as a plan, it beats shining a light in our friend's face while she wastes away on the sofa. We have to do something.”

“Let's do it, then,” he said, reaching for his jacket on the hook. She liked that about Graham – when he got on board, he got on board quickly. “I'll fetch the kitchen mitts.”

“You could just put your hands in your sleeves,” she said, doing exactly that. “Or grab her by the shoulder instead.”

“Better safe than sorry,” he said, swiping them off the coffee table. “You don't hurt your mates, when you have a way of – not doing that.” He scrubbed at his eyes again. “Lord, I need a proper rest. Space Venice Beach, that's where we'd better be headed next. Even home's not relaxing anymore.”

“Yeah, but,” she put her torch on the ground and lifted the Doctor's arm over her shoulder, grabbing hold of her forearm. He hadn't been wrong – it was a bit of a trek to the TARDIS. It wouldn't be all that fun, probably. “You don't travel with the Doctor because it's _relaxing_.”

“Damn right I don't,” he agreed, taking hold of the Doctor's other arm. Her head lolled in unconsciousness, coming to rest on Yaz's shoulder. “But a man can dream.”

 

\---

 

 _Keep dreaming, Graham_ , Yaz thought, rain plastering her hair to her skull as they trudged across the car park. Her hood had been blown off her head about three steps from Graham's house, and she didn't have enough arms to place it back. Rain spat vindictively at her face. “Almost there,” she shouted over the gale. A stray leaf blew straight into her forehead and she shook it off, exasperated. She'd be a frizzy mess the rest of the day, now. Should have kept her hair in her police bun, but it was too late for regrets like that.

“I just want a planet with no weather,” Graham shouted back tiredly, hoisting the Doctor's arm higher. “No weather, no shadows, nothing that wants to eat us – ”

Yaz sighed, tuning him out, focusing on putting one foot in front of the other. She could see the TARDIS now, a blue beacon, under that tree it always landed by. She pictured its insides, glowing and warm and humming with that gentle sound that was always so peaceful. Safety. It was a wonder they hadn't thought of taking refuge in it sooner, but none of them were thinking quite right, even now. _Better late than never_ , she thought, stepping towards it gratefully, the Doctor's breaths warm and shallow on her neck. She was soaked through again, too, hair curling damply against her face, unlaced boots dark with rain water, but there was nothing for it. They'd all be sheltered, in a minute. Sheltered and safe again.

“Come on,” she said, half to Graham, half to the TARDIS, as she leaned against the doors. _I know I'm not her_ , she thought, feeling a bit ridiculous. _But if you could open up anyway, we'd be terribly grateful_.

“Oh, please,” she whispered into the doors, smelling dampened wood and the faintest hint of ozone. Vacuum, apparently. The remnants of stars and gases and a thousand impossible things.

Maybe the TARDIS was listening, or maybe the doors had been left unlocked. Either way, they creaked inward with a gentle groan and the three of them stumbled in, rain dripping down the grated floor, the light inside warm and golden. Graham shut the doors behind them, closing them in, and it was like she could breath for the first time in days.

“Okay,” she said, shuddering. “Okay, we made it.”

“Now what?” Graham asked, breathing hard. He glanced at her, over the Doctor's tilted head between them. “Can't just drop her on the floor.”

“She must have a room,” Yaz said, readjusting her grip. “Or a – a medbay, or something. Isn't there a medbay? I scraped my knee that one time, she must have got that futuristic antibacterial cream from somewhere.”

“We'll spend half a day looking,” Graham despaired, gazing into the TARDIS' depths. “It's a proper maze in here. I spent three hours looking for the kitchen, just the other day, it keeps moving.”

The Doctor had said that if he only stopped insulting the TARDIS' lack of proper sandwich condiments in earshot, she'd let him find it easier, but he remained stubbornly skeptical of the ship's sentience. The jury was still out, as far as Yaz was concerned – but the Doctor certainly acted as though the ship could hear them. And the moving corridors were only a fraction of the oddness she'd glimpsed since coming onboard.

“She'll help us,” she said, hesitantly. “The TARDIS. If she loves the Doctor half as much as the Doctor loves her. Right?”

Graham looked back at her, frowning skeptically. She shrugged, as much as she was able. “Worth a try,” she said. “Come on. We'll find somewhere.”

But as they staggered gracelessly across the console room, the TARDIS hummed and the corridor beyond was lit up with what looked like the lights they put on airplane floors, to guide you to the exits. Yaz smiled, breathlessly. “See?”

“Never does that when I'm lookin' for the kitchen,” Graham groused, but it was good-natured. Relieved, if you knew to listen for it. “Well, come along, then. My arms can't take much more of this.”

Neither could hers, though she wouldn't admit it. The Doctor wasn't especially heavy, but she was taller than Yaz and she had a tendency to – gangle, a little bit, even when conscious. In fact, the whole affair was a bit like hoisting a wet, uncooperative noodle across a grated floor, only the noodle was your unconscious best friend, and you were trying not to bang up her knees too much.

But the TARDIS must have known, somehow, that they were in somewhat dire straits, because the lights led them to the first door on the right, which was usually either the library's pool or a poor semblance of a maintenance closet, filled with random tools and an assortment of lost socks, for whatever reason. At the moment, it opened into a room she'd never seen before, dimly lit and sparsely furnished. There was a cot, in the corner, a rickety bedside table that looked like some kind of antique. A chair, with a red-lined coat draped haphazardly over the edge. A pair of boots at its feet that looked far too large. And –

“Oh,” she whispered, looking up. “Stars.”

The whole universe twinkled invitingly above their heads, clouds of dust and light drifting peacefully. An illusion, it had to be, or a projection of some sort. Either way, it was breathtaking.

“Look at that,” Graham breathed. “Step above them ceiling stars that glow in the dark.”

“This is amazin',” she said, still in a hush, though she couldn't say why. The room seemed to encourage – quiet, somehow. It was warm and dim and – abandoned.

Everything was covered in a fine layer of dust, she realized with a sinking heart. The cot included.

“This can't be right,” Graham said, helping her pull back the cot's only cover. It was a thin, cotton sheet. “It's barely used. Does she really sleep here?”

“I think the point is that she doesn't, actually,” Yaz said, lips pressing together as they deposited the Doctor onto the cot, swinging her legs up over the sheet. She suppressed a sneeze, arms aching.

Graham stepped back, looking drawn. He was coming to a similar conclusion, then. “Well, that's that,” he said, not giving it a voice. “Any change? Or was all this for nothing?”

She pressed back the worry at the front of her mind and reached for the Doctor's wrist again. Her skin was still cool, on the edge of clammy. On the cot, she shifted, brow furrowing, but she didn't wake or flinch. Yaz breathed slowly, calmly. Counting beats.

“They've evened out a bit, I think,” she said, as certainly as she could.

“Colour's improved too,” he pointed out, some of the tension in his face melting away. He breathed out. “Well, that's one thing we did right today. Good thinkin', Yaz.”

She smiled in acknowledgement, setting down the Doctor's hand.

“Now what?”

He frowned. “No way of contacting Ryan easily. Maybe I'd better wait for him, back at the house. We can join you two here, after.”

“That's a good idea,” she said. “We'll be safer in here, all four of us. When Ryan gets back, we can make a plan. We've got those property records, we've got a sphere, we've got a radius. Just need a map. Then we'll have them cornered.” Whatever _them_ even was, but that seemed like a far less pressing problem at the moment.

The frown soured into a grimace, but he swallowed it back before it could overtake his face. “God help us all,” he muttered, glancing down at the Doctor. “Well. Learned from the best, didn't we.”

“The very best.”

“Alright. I'll be back with Ryan later, then. You'll be okay here?”

“I'll be fine,” she said, even though the thought of waiting in the dark for hours on end was a bit nerve-wracking. She was terrible at waiting. Terrible at nothing. “Thanks, Graham.”

He smiled kindly, in quiet understanding.

“Won't be long,” he reassured, turning to leave. The old door creaked as he went, and she was left blanketed in stars and the sound of quiet, shallow breathing.

“Okay,” she said, hushed again. “Okay.”

She wrinkled her nose at the dust in the air, at the quiet dark. Less oppressive than the outside, less oppressive, even, than the dimness of Graham's sitting room, and that was proof enough, maybe, that the shadows outside were something more than what they seemed. The dark here was warm, even if the air was stale, even if the room itself reeked of neglect. Those stars, she thought, glancing up again in wonder. Even they weren't enough to keep the Doctor here. How could that be? And if she didn't sleep here, then – where did she?

She stepped quietly over to the lonely chair and the desk beside it, old, cracked wood. Well-loved, her mother might have said, but to her eyes it was only ancient and poorly cared for. Covered in dust and trinkets that she didn't understand. A bow-tie, an old radio, half torn apart. A cricket bat, leaned up against the side of the desk. What looked like a printed out syllabus, with half the readings crossed out and the word 'BORING' scrawled scratchily in the margins. The only thing that looked as though it might have been disturbed recently was what looked like a journal, TARDIS blue and battered. Well-loved. Free of dust.

She didn't touch it.

 _Who are you_ , she wondered, trailing a cautious finger in the dust, along the edge of the desk. Feeling like an intruder, somehow, like all of this was a horrible invasion of privacy, even though it couldn't be. She didn't even understand what she was intruding on.

She turned from the desk with a sigh and went back to the cot, perching on the end uncomfortably. Glanced, resigned, back to the Doctor and found her gazing back, groggily.

She sagged. “Hello,” she said, so relieved she could barely articulate it.

“Hello, yourself,” the Doctor croaked back, propping herself up on her elbows, face scrunching. Shuddering, finally, as she caught up to her location. She scowled up at the ceiling, with its expanse of stars and light. “Why'd you bring them here? You know, the sofa in the library would've been fine,” she complained up at the TARDIS. “Smells a bit of chlorine, but that's not its fault.”

“Is that where you've been sleeping?” Yaz asked, frowning. “Doctor, what – ”

“Or the swing under the console, for that matter, also perfectly acceptable. Oh, my head,” she sighed, already moving on, scraping her damp hair away from her face. She grabbed hold of the cot's bedpost with whitened knuckles, swinging her legs around. “What've I missed?”

Her eyes were glassy and tired in the dimness surrounding them. Yaz met them with trepidation.

“Not much,” she admitted. “What's the last thing you remember?”

Her face scrunched again, this time in contemplation, cycling quickly through realization, worry, chagrin. “Did I step on Graham's nice rug with my boots on?” She shook her head, wincing. “So bad at being people, that's terrible manners.”

“Doctor,” Yaz said, before she started to tangent. The Doctor closed her mouth, lips flattening grimly. Escape diverted. “Are you alright now? You took a turn earlier, that's why Graham and I dragged you here.”

“Right as rain,” she said, lying through her teeth. She was white as paper, mouth tight with discomfort. Eyes dull. “Well. However right rain can be. Never really understood that saying, to be perfectly honest. Rain's brilliant, but I prefer a nice bit of sunshine myself.”

Yaz massaged her forehead with two fingers. “Are you ever gonna answer one of my questions in a way that actually answers the question?”

“If you have to ask that question, then you already have your answer, don't you?”

“Oh, don't be smug,” Yaz said, dropping her hand to her lap exasperatedly. “You almost died!”

“And here I am, alive! If you can't be smug about that, what can you be?”

Yaz shook her head, feeling more tired than she'd felt in weeks.

“I can't do this right now,” she said mildly. “Look, Doctor, I went to work this morning, and Graham went to see one of his friends in real estate. Drake's been buying up properties, all around town.”

The Doctor frowned. “Properties?”

“My flat building, the offices we visited yesterday. Probably some of the places you found last night, too.” Yaz swallowed, fingers clenched white in her lap. “Doctor, is it – is he eating people's dreams? Or their – thoughts? Can that be possible?”

Something sparked in the dullness of her gaze.

“Brilliant,” she whispered, like she'd dragged the word from the depths of her mouth. “Brilliant, Yaz. Ten points.”

“I'm right?”

A shake of the head, but it was distracted, absent. The Doctor's hands whitened around the bed post. “So close. Not just dreams, I don't think. Psychic energy, you're right, they consume it, they – they must live off of it somehow, you're like – prey to them, like a dinner buffet.” Her nose scrunched. “It's not just interference. They're _snacking_ on all of you. That's what those devices were, some kind of – organic tech. Amplifying your pain, your despair, and then grazing it off you. 'Til it gets to be too much for your minds to take.”

“That's the thing, though, Doctor – ”

“Psychotropic waves, channeled by organic tech,” she whispered harshly. “Broadcast universally, and then focused in on a psychic fingerprint, that is – brilliant. Horrifying. They send the waves out, monitor the population. Hone in on the most vulnerable and focus the waves there. Then they swoop in and gobble them up.” The nose stayed scrunched. “Why Sheffield though? Well, why anywhere, really, gotta say, they really could have had their pick, 2018, pretty rubbish year as far as humanity goes – ”

“ _Doctor_.” She almost hated to interrupt the rambling. It was reassuringly familiar, even if the edges of it were a bit sharper than usual. “Doctor, that's the thing. No one has died since we got back here. Not one person. I think they've moved on.” She forced herself to meet the Doctor's gaze, gritty and dull and unrecognizable. “If we're just the buffet table, then you're – ”

Realization dawned, far later than it should have. The Doctor's hands slipped from the bed post to her lap. “A full four-course meal.” She grimaced. “'Cos I _touched_ it, like an idiot. Gave them everything they needed to focus on me.”

“They were snacking on us.” Yaz swallowed, icy dread pooling in her stomach. “I think they're trying to eat you alive. You've been asleep all day, but you don't – you don't seem any better. You were getting worse, before.” This was certainly an improvement, but only marginally. She was less frantic, more coherent, now, but her face was grey with exhaustion.

The Doctor's face twisted into something half-heartedly indignant. “Of course. They've been chewin' on me the whole time,” she said, sounding deeply offended. “Eating my dreams, I reckon. Easier to snack while the victim's unconscious. The TARDIS shields are protecting us right now though, that was good thinkin' on your part.”

“Of course. We had to try something, we were getting worried.”

She dragged a hand down her face, foot tapping frantically. “Alien shadows that eat people's anguish. _Psychic vampires_ , now that's just rude. You lot have enough to deal with.” Her tone darkened. “And they've killed people, too. Right. Time to put a stop to this.” She looked up beseechingly, unconvincing. “Help me up?”

Yaz stayed where she was.

“Doctor, those people that died. What happened to them, really?”

There was a kind of calculation to that gaze that she'd never noticed before. Maybe before it had been better hidden.

Maybe she'd just never been allowed to see it.

“Human aren't psychic,” the Doctor said finally. “But you still run on psychic energy of a sort. That's the best way I can explain it to you, anyway. Strong feelings generate more of it, make it – stickier, tastier. That's why they're amplifying all the bad, it's – some kind of low-level telepathic field they generate, I reckon. Psychotropic waves, more likely, actually. The generators harness it and spread it across a radius. Stirs up memories, bad thoughts, bad feelings. Then they gobble it up. Trouble is, if they take too much – ”

“You die.”

“Exactly.”

“And – and what about the others? The suicides? Gotta be related, right?”

The Doctor's face was grim. Simmering anger trapped under her jaw. “Only so much the human mind is equipped for.”

“And your mind, Doctor?”

That sharp gaze snapped to her, shuttered, grey, cold. Alien. Only for a second, before it melted into something exhausted but reassuring. Yaz wasn't sure she believed in it entirely, anymore.

“Don't worry about me. Work to do,” the Doctor said, holding out her hands again. “Help me up?”

There was nothing for it, really, she realized with a sinking heart. No one else could fix it. No one else would fix it.

Yaz sighed and shuffled her fingers into her shirtsleeves again, presenting them. The Doctor grabbed hold, her own hands cool and trembling, and Yaz helped her to her feet.

“Where are Ryan and Graham?” she asked, as they stumbled together, out of the Doctor's empty, unused room and down the long, winding corridor that lead to the console. The TARDIS was humming gently, lighting up the path the way it – she? - had done earlier. It was almost soothing. Maybe it was meant to be. “Are they alright?”

“Ryan's at work,” Yaz said, adjusting her grip to keep the Doctor from careening into the wall. The fabric of her coat was cool in her grasp. She steered them a little straighter, swallowing back a sigh. The Doctor's motor control was haphazard at the best of times, and this – she course-corrected again, as gently as she could – was emphatically not the best of times. “Graham went back to the house to wait for him, let him know we were in here.”

“Good,” the Doctor said, distracted, extracting herself from Yaz's grasp and making a stumbling beeline for the console, tripping down the stairs before Yaz could stop her. “We'll head there in a mo', just have to – double check what we're dealing with here. Confirm your theory.”

“We're going out again?” Yaz asked, concerned, making her way down the stairs more carefully. “But – so soon?”

“Where's that scanner?” the Doctor muttered, staggering to the console's other side, wincing as the display screen she lifted off the controls disconnected in a spray of sparks. She discarded it on the floor with a frown. “What do you mean, so soon? We've got – psychic shadows to track down, can't do it from in here. Just have to – oh, _where is it_?”

“Where's what?” Not that Yaz would be much help, probably. The Doctor had shown her how to navigate, technically, but it was all a complicated number of steps that seemed to involve an unfortunate number of random levers and keypads and – zig-zag plotters. And she didn't think she'd ever been given the same directions twice. She half suspected the Doctor made them up every time.

Or maybe just didn't know them herself, exactly, only that was a bit too terrifying a thought to contemplate in its entirety.

“Oh, can't find the button,” the Doctor sighed, clarifying nothing, sinking to her knees absently, hands wandering over the controls haphazardly, blindly. “Nothing's ever where you leave it, not even the levers. Come on, not sure I can do this by myself right now – ” She paused, sagging against the console. “Oh. Hold on.” She looked up at the ceiling, head tilted. “Enable voice interface? Does that still work?”

“Voice interface enabled.”

“ _Hah_ ,” the Doctor said, delighted, “still got it! Scan away, then!” But the delight fled her face, and she and Yaz both jumped at the same time as the image of a woman appeared suddenly, just between them. A blonde. Beautiful, Yaz thought, heart catching before she could stop herself. Big brown eyes. The outfit was a bit early 2000s, but it didn't detract from her one bit.

“Oh, no, no, no, forgot about that part,” the Doctor muttered, blanching. “Why do you always have to put a _face_ to everything?”

“Doctor,” Yaz said. “What – who is that? How did they get here?”

“Holographic voice interface,” the Doctor sighed, smushing her face into the console. Avoiding it. “Using the image of – of people the TARDIS knows. She's just trying to help.” She patted the console gingerly, staying crouched down. “But that is, in fact, _really not helping_.”

“Diagnostic criteria available,” the blonde woman said, flickering. The Doctor flinched at her voice.

“Nope,” she said tightly, cringing into the console, “absolutely not, try someone else, please, anyone else – ”

The hologram flickered again, into another blonde with a haughty glare and an ostentatious hat. Into a worried-looking man in a kilt, a woman with dark skin and kind eyes in a red leather coat. A teenager in a patch-covered bomber jacket, a tiny, glaring brunette in a plaid skirt. A bald, white man in glasses and a jumper, also glaring with concern. Another woman, dressed in what looked like Victorian garb, the line of her mouth sharp and cruel, eyes glinting. The Doctor finally glanced back, aghast.

“Someone I _like_ ,” she protested, emphasizing with her hands, glowering when the hologram didn't change. “ _You_ – don't be cheeky!”

It flickered into another blonde – did the Doctor have a _type_ , Yaz wondered, before she could stop herself – with a gun at her side and a mess of curls piled on top of her head.

The Doctor blanched even whiter, eyes squeezing shut.

“ _Fine_ ,” she said, voice shaking, “yes, okay, that one's on me really, I meant someone I like that's _never tried to kill me_!” She pressed her forehead against the console again. “Find me someone that doesn't hurt, someone – alive, mostly, give me – give me little Amelia again.”

The dangerous-looking blonde was suddenly a red-haired child. She looked distinctly unimpressed.

“Diagnostic criteria available,” she said. Scottish. How could a hologram be Scottish?

“Hello, Pond,” the Doctor said, but she still wouldn't look. “Been a while.”

“I am not Amelia Pond, I am a voice interface.”

“I know,” she said, eyes averted.

“Doctor,” Yaz said, stepping closer. “That's – that's a child, did you travel with a child?” The amount of times they'd all almost been blown up, she couldn't help but think, horrified. The rest of her brain was still catching up with the assortment of other people the hologram had flickered through. The succession of blondes.

“What? _No_ ,” the Doctor said, equally horrified, though with a slight edge that meant she might have been lying, just a bit. She removed her forehead from the console with reluctance to look back at her. “Amelia Pond, I met her when she was a child but she – she grew up. Meant to return the next day, ended up returning a decade or so later, it – it happens.” She patted the console again, struggling to her feet. “The old girl's never been great at timing, I will say.”

“Diagnostic criteria available,” the hologram said again, somehow managing to sound distinctly cross.

“Yes, I _know_ ,” the Doctor said, finally turning to face it. “I didn't mean to leave you, y'know. Abandon you. You ended up knowing that, right?”

The hologram of the red-headed child – Amelia Pond, apparently, whoever that was, whoever that had – _been_ – only stared back, unblinking. Real and not. Only light and information, held together by gravity.

A blink, and where there had been a girl there was now a woman, with the same fiery mane and a gaze that, somehow, was kind.

“Oh my god, she's mostly leg,” Yaz said quietly, again, almost despite herself. “Like, 90 percent leg, how is that possible?”

“Diagnostic criteria available,” the hologram said, softly. Still Scottish. Less cross.

“I hope you knew,” the Doctor said, absently, running a thumb along the edge of the console unconsciously. “Well. Alright. Diagnose, I suppose.”

“Psychotropic damage estimated at 7 percent of total brain capacity. Neural cell regeneration has been compromised. Long-term memory – ”

“ – okay!” The Doctor's knuckles whitened over the console, along with her face. “Great, well, that – makes sense, explains a lot!” She spun around, pressing a few buttons, flipping a switch arbitrarily. Keeping busy, not actually doing anything. Yaz could always tell. Especially right now. Her hands were shaking over the controls. “Thanks for the help, Pond.”

“I am not Amelia Pond, I am a voice interface. Your brain capacity – ”

“ – will be sorely missed, but we've got bigger problems right now.”

“Doctor, what – that sounds _bad_ ,” Yaz said stepping closer, skirting around the hologram. “What does it – she – what does that mean?”

“It means we were right,” the Doctor said grimly, flipping another switch. “Whatever's out there feeds on psychic energy. It – eats your brain. Your memories. Sort of. Not really, actually, but – well, that's as close an analogy as I can get right now, _honestly_ – ” She pinched the bridge of her nose, hunching over the console. “Like thinking through mud.”

“Can I do anything?”

“Nothing for it but to put an end to all this.” The Doctor straightened and fished the sonic out of her pocket, flipped it once, twice, and caught it. “Track down the source and – ”

But the rest of the words died in her throat.

“Blow it up?” Yaz suggested, the words tasting bitter on her tongue.

She couldn't see the Doctor's eyes. She'd looked away again, and half her face was covered by her hair.

“I'll do what I have to,” she said, unreadable. Far too mild. “People have died, Yaz. I can't just let it be. Neither can you, I shouldn't think. Unless I've misjudged you entirely.”

“Of course not,” she protested, trying to ignore the tired edge to her best friend's voice. “That's not – I didn't mean it like that. Of course we have to help. Of course we have to – ”

 _We have to do what we must_ , only that was a bit horrible, wasn't it? People who were people, people who were shadows, even when they were terrible, they were still – people somehow, weren't they?

“I never took a moment to even think about it, really, before,” she said quietly. “I thought – I thought it could always be straightforward. Even with Charlie, as long as I didn't think about it too much, we could be entirely right, but – but we're not, really. Are we?” She rubbed the back of her neck, wincing at the tension. “We're doing the best we can, and it's more than most people ever would, but it's still not always – right. Or simple. Unless – does the trying make it right?” She shook her head, feeling slightly ill again, uncertainty settling in her gut like nausea. “I'm just trying to understand.”

The Doctor looked up at her, through that curtain of hair. “I've been trying to understand for centuries,” she said, a bit wistfully. “Still don't think I've got it. Got close, once, maybe – pub crawl with Kant, that'll sort out your moral view of the universe – but I've never quite – ” Her smile turned into a grimace. “Nothing for it, though. People need help, I never say no. Even when I probably should. Even when it might not be simple.”

Yaz frowned. “Is – is that what makes you right?”

“I hope so. I really hope so.” The Doctor's face stayed mild, but her eyes were shining with something that Yaz didn't recognize. “But I'm not really sure it's about that.”

“What is it about then?”

Silence. Nothing but that enigmatic smile, only it was still less of a smile and more of a grimace. Was it just that she didn't know, Yaz wondered. Or was it that Yaz was meant to decide for herself? How much of this was a test? How much of it was just – the Doctor? How could she ever possibly know?

How could anyone? Had any one of them ever gotten closer, those other girls, those other people? Had they made it past the mask?

“That girl, Amelia,” she said, changing the subject so abruptly it was probably horribly awkward. But the Doctor was a dab hand at awkward conversation herself, usually without the self-awareness, so maybe none of it mattered at all. “Who was she? What happened to her?”

The hologram still flickered in her peripheral vision, silent. Watching.

The Doctor shook her head, moving, hand trailing along the console. “ _You_ ,” she said softly, “always with the terrible timing.” But Yaz got the impression she was talking to the TARDIS. She spoke to it – her? – often enough that it was no longer odd, even a bit expected. Like a lover, like a friend, like a secret. Like something alive. Maybe, Yaz thought, as the TARDIS hummed again, as the console grew the slightest bit brighter, because it was, somehow.

“Doctor.”

The Doctor rolled her eyes up to the ceiling, reluctant, the line of her mouth thin and tense. Kept a hand on the console, for comfort, Yaz thought.

“Why was she special?” Yaz pressed, as gently as she could.

“You're all special,” the Doctor said, frowning. “Every one of you.”

Yaz swallowed, frustrated but determined not to show it. “Who was she, then? What happened?”

By the look of her outfit, she couldn't have been more than a few years out from the present. Or maybe that didn't matter, when you were a time traveller, but – but it was all a bit strange, wasn't it? Or she was being paranoid, or whatever bleak shadows infecting the world outside were still affecting her too, had left their mark in bile and suspicion, coating her tongue, but – but it couldn't be wrong of her, to be curious. It couldn't be. Even with Graham's gentle warning ringing in her ears.

The Doctor withdrew her hands from the console and shoved them into her pockets. “She was just a girl from Leadworth,” she said, turning to face the hologram. Staring at it, blankly. “And she was stroppy, and kind, and – also my mother-in-law, actually, thinking about it. Don't ask, long story.” Her face twisted. “And I ruined her life, Yasmin Khan. I ruined it. Is that what you wanted to know?”

“That can't be true,” she said, but her heart was in her stomach. “I don't believe it.”

“Disable voice interface,” the Doctor said, tightly, ignoring her. The hologram of the redhead flickered out like she'd never been there. The expanse between them was left empty.

“It can't be, I _know_ you – ” She stopped. The Doctor smiled, but it wasn't warm or especially nice. “You're the most wonderful person I've ever met,” Yaz said, but it felt watered down, weak. She stepped forward, reaching.

“Amelia Pond would probably say the same thing, if you asked her,” the Doctor said, unresisting as Yaz pulled her hands into her own, skin covered by her shirtsleeves. She wouldn't look her in the eyes. “But I still ruined her life.” A pause. Yaz's heart was still in her stomach. “I might ruin yours, too.”

“Is that what you're afraid of?” Yaz plunged forward, hands tightening around the Doctor's own. _Is that why you keep us away?_ “Because I'm not.” But she heard the shake in her own voice. “I just – ”

The Doctor met her gaze and she stilled.

“You should be, probably,” the Doctor said. And her eyes were steely and cold like she was trying to be stern, but the twist of her mouth was miserable. She couldn't keep her heart off her sleeve, even now.

“Doctor,” Yaz said, voice a hush. Insistent, despite herself. Feeling, horribly, like she'd finally cornered her, like she'd finally won whatever game they'd been playing, but there was no triumph in it. No satisfaction. “Who are you?”

Those slender hands nearly slipped out of her own, but she tightened her grasp. Felt the Doctor's fingers under the fabric of her shirt, skin unnaturally cool.

“You have every right to ask that, but I wish you wouldn't.” Whispered.

“Why, though?”

“Really,” the Doctor said, sharper. “We're doing this now?”

“You say you're an alien, but you won't even tell us where you're from. And now, all this – I – ”

It wasn't right, the suspicion that had taken ahold of her, reached inside of her like a shadow, but she couldn't help herself. It throbbed, inside, where it had been slowly growing for weeks. It had been dragged to the surface with the tide and now she couldn't stop it, even though the Doctor's face was terribly blank and terribly pale and this was, very likely, the worst possible moment.

“Where I'm from isn't important. Especially not right now.”

“You know all about us,” Yaz said. “We tell you everything. But you get to stay a mystery. How is that fair?”

“I've _shown_ you who I am,” the Doctor said, pulling away again, but she was too weak. Her hands stayed caught in Yaz's own. “Why can't that be enough? Why isn't that enough? Who I am is what I do.” Her breaths came sharp in her mouth, thin. Desperate. “If I tell you where I'm from, what I've done, you'll only be disappointed.”

Yaz dropped her hands. “I could never be disappointed in you.”

“ _Yes you could_!” Sharp. Hair-raising. “And it would break my hearts. It really would.”

“Doctor – ”

“I had a life,” she said, softly. “Before I fell out of the sky into yours.” She swallowed. “And it was long, and terrible, and wonderful, and I was outrunning it, I think. Starting over. Following my own advice. That's what all this has been.” Her smile was bitter and terrible. Exhausted. “But now it's right behind my eyes again.”

Yaz shuddered. At the – oldness of her, the stark unfamiliarity. “You can't just run,” she said, despite herself, even though it felt a bit like talking to a stranger. It wasn't the Doctor's fault, she thought, heart thudding in her chest. She was exhausted, ill. Not herself.

Or maybe it was just that the layers of her had been stripped away, and this was all that was left.

“You don't have to run,” she said. “Not from us.”

“Running's rule number one.” The Doctor shook her head, a bit wistfully. “Or haven't I taught you anything?”

So it was a test, then.

“I'm just trying to understand,” Yaz said again. “Why won't you help me?”

But she was too afraid, Yaz realized, gazing into those eyes, deep as the universe, cold with fear. Fear of what?

“I can't,” she whispered. “I just – can't. Please. There's no time for this.”

Those eyes ought to have been weaponized. The thing was, Yaz realized, heart sinking, feeling cold. She could have asked her to do almost anything, and Yaz would have done it. Even now. Even still. She would drop it, for now, because the Doctor had asked her to, because to do anything else was almost inconceivable. And wasn't that its own kind of horrible, its own kind of wonderful? To be able to inspire that kind of loyalty in people – and spend your life horrified by it. In fear of it.

Yaz and the rest of them may have been left in the dark, but the Doctor, she thought, shivering. The Doctor knew exactly who she was, and what she did to people, and it scared her half to death.

It should have scared Yaz, too, probably. The Doctor had implied as much. But the core of her was still a flickering candle of worry, simmering frustration that sat sour in her throat, a sort of curiosity tainted by suspicion. She wasn't afraid, though. Not of the Doctor.

“Okay,” she said finally, offering her hand, still covered by her sleeve. “But we're not finished, you and me.” She gave her a frown that was mockingly stern, her best impression of her oldest, most crotchety, most beloved sergeant.

The Doctor gave a mock salute in return. Relief, naked in her face. That fear, sitting nestled just behind it.

“Your wish is my command, PC Khan,” she said. Trying out a smile that was watery and unconvincing. “Now. Shall we try to take down a bunch of intangible, psychic shadows with nothing but our wits and gumption?”

“Gumption?”

“Would you prefer chutzpah? That's more fun to say actually, let's call it chutzpah, executive decision. Come on!”

“Hold on!” Yaz ground her feet into the grate of the TARDIS floor, hesitating. The Doctor paused, hand in hers. “Going out there again, won't it – will you be alright?”

“Will it try to go back to eating my brain again, once we're outside the shields? Well, yes, probably.” She scratched her head. “I could have a go at extending them, maybe. But that's quite the potential radius we have to cover and it would take too long. Another executive decision, vetoing that, let's go!”

“Not a big fan of your executive decisions,” she said loudly, letting herself be pulled out of the TARDIS into the gale beyond. “Thought we were a democracy!”

“Haven't I told you? I'm president of Earth!”

“That is not a thing,” she said flatly, as rain spat against her face again, the air around them cold and wet and dim with early evening.

“Oh, it absolutely is, I can't stand it.” The Doctor shook her head, gazing out at the darkened buildings beyond them. The TARDIS doors closed behind and that golden warmth disappeared. Yaz tried not to feel bereft, but her fingers tightened around the Doctor's own. “But it has its uses.”

“You're full of surprises, today.”

“Today and always.”

She couldn't dispute that.

“Unto the breach again?” the Doctor asked, swinging their arms. She bounced on her heels and winced, regretting it.

Yaz sighed and let herself be pulled along again. “Today and always,” she said.

 

\---

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (the doctor does have a type and that type is Romana II (but also everyone they've ever met) and you can pry that headcanon from my cold dead hands tbh)
> 
> Happy New Year everyone! Hope your holidays were glad. Sorry for the wait with this one, but it's a bit longer to compensate! Hopefully it flows okay - this one was written in chunks and stitched together, and it's super late here, so. You know. Y'all know. 
> 
> Anyway, thanks so much for reading, and I'd love to hear what you thought! Some of you guys are really on the spot with your predictions!
> 
> Best,  
> \- W


	7. vii.

\---

“Why is it always old, abandoned warehouses?” Ryan hissed as they clambered up the rusted, slippery fire escape outside the last place on Yaz's list. His knuckles were tight around the rungs. “Why don't them aliens ever set up shop in a nice bookstore? Suburban home? Department store?”

“Yes to all three,” the Doctor whispered down at them, grinning, though her face was still pinched in the gloom. “Also add public schools, submarines, play parks, and concert halls to your list.”

“Oh, god,” he said, alarmed. “Nowhere's safe.”

“Well, I always like to think of it like this – if nowhere's safe, then everywhere's safe.”

“That don't make any sense.”

“Or does it?”

“Can we save the charming banter for when we reach the top of this thing?” Graham hissed from below them, grey from worry and exertion. “There's a time and place!”

“Don't let the psychic shadow aliens get you down, Graham,” Ryan retorted, swallowing back a sigh of relief as he and Yaz finally joined the Doctor at the top. “They tried to eat the Doctor, and she's still funny.”

“They're still eating the Doctor!” Graham protested, still a few rungs below them. “She almost toppled off this thing three times getting up here, or were you too busy bantering to notice?”

“ _Oi_ ,” the Doctor warned, brow furrowing. “No pointing fingers, we're all doing our best to stay positive in light of the fact that a large telepathic field is currently damaging all of our brains and trying to convince us that everything is terrible.” She winced. “Ooh. Meant to cushion that a bit. But see? We're all trying. Don't forget, Ryan,” she said over her shoulder as she unlocked the door they were trying to enter with the sonic, “I've got about a thousand years more experience than all of you pretending everything is fine when it's definitely not.” She frowned again. “Ooh, meant to cushion that too.”

“Do you mean lie?” Yaz asked, torn between amusement and frustration. The frustration was winning the long game, if only because she could feel it pulsing behind her eyes now in a way that was impossible to ignore.

“Cushion!” the Doctor insisted, quieter now as she pushed open the door. Behind them, Yaz heard Graham finally clamber onto the platform with a disarming clang of boots on metal. She winced. “It's like lying, but it's to make people feel better, so it's not as deplorable.”

“Whatever helps you sleep at night, Doctor,” Ryan said lightly, missing her grimace. Yaz swallowed back a sigh. This evening was going to be long and probably – no, _definitely_ – dangerous.

“Is this it, then?” she asked, preparing to fetch the map she had folded up in her coat pocket. “It has to be, doesn't it? We've scratched off everywhere else.”

“Should be.” The Doctor lead the charge through the door, sonic held in front of her like some kind of magic wand, which usually would have been enough to make Yaz smile. Tonight, she was far too tired. Far too worried. “If not, we'll have to rethink everything we've thought and that would be – annoying.”

The upper floor of the warehouse had been office space, once. It was hard to tell in the darkness, but under her feet it was carpeted poorly, water damaged and moldy. If there had been furniture once, it had all been stolen.

The Doctor stalked ahead, as stealthily as she was able, which – wasn't especially stealthy, but Yaz didn't have the heart to criticize. The inner wall of the upper floor was full of windows looking down into the warehouse below, grey in the gloom, cracked and lined in dust. The rest of them crept closer, keeping below the window's line of sight.

“Okay,” the Doctor said, poking her head up briefly to look. She grinned, eyes lighting up. “ _Hah_. You were right, Yasmin Khan. This is the place. Central motherboard, just through there, I can see it. If we can destroy that, they'll have no way of generating the telepathic signal. You'll all be safe, and they'll starve.” She frowned, brow crinkling. “They must have moved it off their ship. Wonder where that's parked. And how no one noticed it. Usually, there's at least someone on this planet paying attention. Might need to have some sharp words with Kate Stewart.”

“That motherboard's surrounded by shadows,” Ryan pointed out. “And Drake's probably down there too. How do we get to it?”

The Doctor met his gaze, head tilted.

“Of course,” he said, lips flattening. “Right. Yep.”

“Direct confrontation!” The Doctor stumbled away from the window, arms pinwheeling. Yaz grabbed the back of her coat to keep her upright. She hunched back below the window's line of sight. “That's – what's the millennial term? The mood?”

“Oh, I know this one,” Graham said brightly. “It's the big mood, Doc.”

“Oh god, you're both wrong, I hate all of this, _let's go_ ,” Ryan said in a forceful whisper, meeting Yaz's gaze in horrified despair. She shrugged back, amused.

“Come on, you lot!” The Doctor stumbled forward, cheerfully determined, and that, oddly enough, seemed perfectly genuine. “Back down the ladder!”

Ryan shook his head.

“You know,” he said, as they followed the Doctor and Graham back out into the rain. Resigned. “I think I'm starting to agree with Graham about Space Venice Beach.”

Yaz nudged him gently as they pushed through the door. “Thought we were trying to stay positive?”

“I'm positive that we all need a vacation. How's that?”

Yaz huddled into her coat, eyeing the ladder they'd just clambered up with a tired sort of trepidation.

“Alright,” she conceded, trying hard not to think about what was waiting for them when they reached the bottom. “You know what? You may have a point.”

 

\---

 

The front of the warehouse was decrepit and slick with rain, its signage long ripped off by wind or vandals. The paint was peeling off the door.

“It is very classic,” Graham pointed out, though his face was pinched with worry.

“Love a good warehouse,” the Doctor said, looking up at it. Considering it. “Love a good bit of atmospheric rain, too, for that matter.”

Which – actually, that was a good point. “Doctor,” Yaz asked, stepping closer despite herself. “Is the – is the rain a part of this at all?”

“The rain?” she glanced up, lips flattening. “You know, I'm starting to think it might just be rain. Funny how that works.” She glanced down at herself, hesitating. “Probably should have come here in something other than pyjamas. Does it detract from my aura?”

“What aura would that be?”

“Well, that's just the question, isn't it?” The Doctor returned her gaze to the front of the building. “Hmm. No one's come out to meet us.”

“But they know we're here.” Yaz shifted in her boots, arms crossed nervously.

“Of course they do. They always do.”

“Nothing for it, then,” Ryan said, looking far more calm than he actually was, she knew. “Do we knock?”

“No,” the Doctor said, stepping forward, a gleam in her eye. “I was thinking we might try something a bit more dramatic.” But she paused mid-step, glancing back at the three of them. “You could stay outside, you know,” she said, and it was half a plea. “It would be safer. It's always safer.”

Ryan crossed his arms. “Not a chance.”

“We stick together,” Graham said pointedly.

“We're with you,” Yaz insisted.

The Doctor's lips pressed together a bit miserably, but she never told them no. She respected them enough to let them choose, Yaz thought, feeling a pang of something grateful fight against the frustration hollowing out her skull. There was something sort of noble in that.

“Alright,” the Doctor said, turning back to the door, eyes sharpening with anticipation. Yaz watched her allow herself a very tiny smile, something sharp and little and over too fast, and she kicked the door in with relish and a resounding crash.

The warehouse was dark and washed out. Grey with ancient concrete and evening gloom, coated in shadows with no source that stuck to the walls like dripping paint.

Mr. Drake stood at the centre of it all, half-shadow himself. They clung to him, wept around him like a cloak and gathered at his feet. His eyes were clear and light and cold.

“I thought you might come,” he said, placid. But those cold eyes looked sharp with hunger. “I've tasted you, Doctor. You should know, your despair is exquisite.”

“Ugh.” The Doctor stumbled forward haphazardly, face scrunching in disgust. “Could have done without that phrasing, to be honest.” The sonic spun in her hand, a silent menace. “What are you?”

“Shadow,” Drake said. “The dark. Form and void. Beyond your comprehension.”

The Doctor snorted, pausing to flip the sonic up and catch it. “Very funny. See, I've run into shadows that eat people before.” Her smile grew thin and razor-sharp. “But you're not Vashta Nerada. So what are you? Distant cousin? Twice removed?”

“We have evolved far beyond the pitiful likes of the Vashta Nerada,” he replied, still smooth and unruffled. Unnaturally still, though the shadows behind him rippled. “You fear them. You will come to fear us too.”

“Of course I'm afraid, you've been gobbling up Sheffield. And me, for that matter.” The Doctor stepped forward. “Are you this rude to everyone you try to drain of psychic energy? And what's that mean – 'us'? Are you their leader, or are you a hive mind, too? Clearly sentient, takes sentience to be this terrible on purpose. C'mon,” she goaded, smiling terribly. “Are you one or are you many?”

“What answer can I give that will satisfy you?” he asked, raising an eyebrow. “You're far too protective of these – cattle.” The rest of his face remained still, and, yeah, _definitely_ not a person. Yaz swallowed back the bile gathered at the back of her throat, fear battling with the offense she felt. _Cattle_. She couldn't believe he'd passed for human. His face was far too smooth. Far too odd. He tilted his head, just slightly, and the effect was somehow grotesque. “At the end of the day, you're only a meal. You and all these – people. But you must understand, Doctor. I've seen the inside of your head. Tasted it. You and I are far beyond the likes of petty humans. It's what makes you so – delicious.”

“ _Ugh_ ,” the Doctor said again. “So impolite. You'd never be invited to tea.” She stopped them just short of the shadows, one arm flung discretely to halt them, the other white-knuckled, wrapped around the edge of Yaz's coat. For balance, or – something. Yaz wasn't sure she knew she was doing it. The Doctor didn't like to touch people casually – however friendly she was, she wasn't a hugger. But fabric, she could do. The edges of their sleeves, the ends of their jackets. An absent, intimate sort of distance. “Whatever you are, we are nothing alike. For one thing, I don't eat people. For another, I think they're remarkable.” Her face darkened. “You're nothing but a murderer.”

“I have seen the inside of your mind, Doctor,” Drake pressed, shadows growing behind him like some cartoon villain, only terrifying. “Your memories. Your dreams. Your thoughts.” He stilled, and the shadows did too. Waiting, Yaz thought, her own breaths suddenly loud in the silence. “You are a murderer, too.”

A lie, she thought first. It was lying, provoking. Of course it was. That was what this thing did, what they all did, ripped you up inside and consumed you, of course it was a lie. But the Doctor dropped the edge of her coat and stepped away, far too still, eyes flat. Resigned.

Not a lie, Yaz realized, heart dropping to her stomach. But –

“Don't poke at what you can't handle, Drake,” the Doctor warned darkly, half a sneer sketching its way across her face. She stepped forward again, tilting sideways still, unsteady. “I have had a _long_ couple of days. Maybe you're right. Maybe I am a murderer too. So understand me when I say that I have no qualms about destroying you. Especially right now.” Her face tightened. “I'm giving you a choice. _Leave_. This planet is under my protection.”

The shadows swirled forward to meet her, though Drake stayed where he was, a few metres from the telepathic field generator. Or its motherboard, at least. Yaz saw her wince as the shadows drew nearer, lips drawing tight but she kept moving, waving a frantic, reproachful hand behind her when Ryan moved to follow. Graham, face drawn, tugged him back gently. Kept a careful hand on his forearm.

Yaz stayed back with them and hated it. Being a bystander, being helpless. It was why she'd joined the police, why she'd joined the Doctor. To help people. To stand up to the bullies of the world, to do more than just stand by and let things happen.

But Graham knew, better than them, she thought, fear filling the hollows of her chest. Sometimes you could only watch. Just like in the Punjab. Just like on Kandoka's moon. Terrible; necessary. A paradox. And the Doctor, somehow always at the centre of it.

“This system is flawlessly designed, Doctor,” Drake said, face still calm and smooth, tone dripping in polite regret. Unconcerned, as the shadows rushed forward, sucking up the light. They made no sound, but the wind picked up around them, stirring up a phantom howl, pushing the Doctor's hair from her eyes as she stalked unsteadily forward. “It's worked on a thousand planets, a thousand moons, for a thousand turns of the sun. You're only walking to your death. Your friends will follow, and then this city. Then the world, eventually. We will feast for centuries. But it's a pity.” His eyes narrowed only imperceptibly. “We were going to savour you.”

“ _What part_ ,” she gritted, swinging the sonic in front of her and aiming it at the motherboard, “of under my protection do you not understand?” Nothing seemed to change, but she swept the sonic back under her nose, grinning at it fiercely, just for a moment. “Hah! Last, last warning,” she said, teeth clenching as the shadows swooped closer. “ _Leave_.”

He'd made a mistake, threatening them. He was starting to realize it, too.

“Who protects the Earth from you, Doctor?” Drake demanded, balking imperceptibly as she continued forward. Panicking now, a bit, Yaz thought, satisfaction burning quick at the bottom of her stomach. “Who stops you?” He was trying to aggravate, distract. Normally it wouldn't have worked, she was sure. But today –

“No one,” the Doctor said, cold and arrogant and dripping in panic.

“ _Who stops you_ , Oncoming Storm?” Drake's voice was a cross between a hiss and a roar, an awful, whispering cry that shouldn't have carried but did. Screaming titles that didn't fit, that didn't make any sense at all, but the Doctor flinched at them like they were physical blows. “Beast of Trenzalore! Great Destroyer!”

“Have you been talking to my people?” she asked, voice ringing clear and strained through the gale, through the howling whisper of the dark around her. Knuckles white against the sonic, bedraggled and furious. Desperate. “Because you sound just like them. No one stops me. I don't need to be stopped. I'm not _like that_ anymore.”

Drake sneered, and his teeth were perfect and white. “I have seen your hearts,” he said. “Your fears. Exquisite. You're right, you know.” His head tilted again, that cold, hungry gaze fixed forward. “You haven't changed at all.”

“I _have_ changed,” she insisted, jabbing the air in front of her with the sonic, face twisting. Still pressing forward, though her pace had slowed. “I'm different now.”

“You wear that face like a mask,” he replied, unmoving. Still afraid, Yaz thought, and for a moment she could understand why. “You hide the truth from your friends, from yourself. You run from what you were but you would still destroy us!” Fear sharpened his tongue. His eyes narrowed, grasping. “Just like you destroyed the boy.”

“All _this_ is on you,” the Doctor hissed. “Your _fate_ is on you.”

“Did he deserve to die, Doctor?”

“No one deserves to die,” she said, taking another step, sounding resigned. Her pace had slowed. She was faltering, Yaz thought, feeling sick, fear climbing like ice up her spine, demanding action. “I gave him a chance, too. He made his choice.”

He – it – _they_ , whatever they were facing, sewn together in the form of Mr. Drake – it was truly afraid, now. Shimmering with uncertainty, those eyes wide and dilated, and she knew that look, she'd seen it in crowds, in the faces of victims and criminals alike, desperate –

“What gives you the _right_?” he hissed, and the shadows behind Drake billowed out, stretching further, faster, and he straightened as the Doctor stumbled, face pinched in pain. Still being slowly consumed, Yaz thought, heart pounding in her throat, almost louder than the wind, and this wasn't working, she wanted to charge forward, throw herself in front, drag the Doctor back and out the door, back to the TARDIS –

But Graham tugged her back, by the hem of her coat, apologetic and resigned.

“Do you trust her?” he whispered, hand still wrapped around Ryan's forearm.

It wasn't even a question. Even still, somehow. Despite everything.

“Of course,” she said, voice shaking.

He let go of her coat. “Then _trust her_.”

Impossible things and impossible choices. That was what her life was made of now. You couldn't have one without the other. Maybe that was the lesson here. She turned back to face the maelstrom, staying where she was, feeling ill.

“Monster!” Drake called, desperate, shimmering, wavering. “ _Murderer_!”

“Oh, you are barely worth this.” The Doctor shook her head, disgusted, eyes dark. A stranger. And somehow – not. “But I have had a terrible day and _I am trying_ ,” she spat out through clenched teeth, wind wailing around her, whipping her hair into a frenzied halo, “ _to be kind_. Do you understand? Without witness, without reward. I made myself into something better, I became someone better, someone kinder, and you've gone and dug up all the parts of me I've tried to bury. Do you _understand_ what you've _done_?”

She staggered further into the shadows, into the gale, teeth gritted. Face set into an expression that Yaz didn't recognize and never wanted to see again. Some terrible and frightening force, pyjama-clad and tilting unsteadily forward in unlaced boots.

“You call yourselves ancient? I have lived,” the Doctor said, “for thousands of years. Or billions. Depending on your counting.” Her voice cracked but she pushed forward, head tilted up at the ceiling, swarming with shadows. “You're right. Congratulations! I've done a thousand horrible things. I'll do a thousand more, I'm sure. I thought I burned my world to cinder, and I would do it again. You've only just scratched the surface of me,” she hissed, something belligerent and old and furious boiling underneath her skin that was utterly unfamiliar. “You want the rest? You can _take it._ ”

The shadows swarmed toward her, but it was too late. Drake moved too, towards the motherboard, a smooth, inhuman gallop, but he wouldn't make it fast enough. She'd been distracting them, Yaz thought, slightly dazed, horror coating the back of her mouth like bile. Distracting them while playing like she was distracted herself.

With a smile like a snarl, the Doctor slammed her hand directly onto the telepathic field generator. Yaz watched the shadows tremble and shake, felt a pressure building in the air, behind her eyes, something horrible and metallic-tasting. Ryan snatched at her hand, and all three of them pressed together, transfixed as the ceiling burst into flames. A thousand years or more of anguish, burning away the dark. The shadows were choking on it. Drowning in it.

“I gave you a warning,” the Doctor said as Drake howled, hair set alight by the brightness above her, blood streaming down from her nose. Her voice was raw. Her face was cold. “Y'should have listened.”

His terrible gaze remained fixed forward, cool as glass and frozen in a rictus of terror and agony. Screaming. Yaz felt Ryan tuck his face away into her shoulder, away from the awful glare of the ceiling set alight, the burning metal smell toasting the air in front of them, but she didn't look away. Couldn't look away.

“What,” Drake rasped, face melting away into shadow, into flame and light and smoke, rising up to meet the rest, “gives you the _right_?”

But he wouldn't get an answer. It was over almost as quickly as it had begun, as he dissolved, melted, burned away with the rest of the shadows, until the warehouse was left cold and grey and sour with burnt metal. Empty, but for the four of them. Silent. Yaz took a quiet, gasping breath in for what felt like the first time in minutes. Ryan glanced forward, finally, too shocked to even bother trying to be cool about it, like he might have done usually.

The Doctor took her hand off the generator. Shook it, slightly. Smoke curled away from her palm, from the mother board.

It had melted.

“Don't feel sorry for me,” she whispered without turning around. A hunched silhouette against the sallow, murky grey of the warehouse. “I can feel it, y'know. Humans,” she said, spinning suddenly on her heel, shrugging off the unsettling oldness of herself like a cloak, shoving her hands casually into her pockets. “Always – _projecting_ , you lot, never could keep a single feeling to yourself, one handshake and any psychic worth a damn can tell _exactly_ what you're thinkin' – ”

She cut herself off with a swallow. Looked to the lot of them, the sudden brightness of her face thin and fragile and false. Uncertain. “I've lived for thousands of years,” she said in what was probably meant to be a reassuring tone of voice and was not in the slightest. “I've seen so much joy and happiness. So much hope. I've – _felt_ so much hope.” Her chin wavered, but it was only for a moment. The brief smile that followed was bitter and far too sharp. “Wish I could've drowned them in that instead.”

Graham stepped forward. “Doc –”

“Ah!” She stepped closer on a wavering foot, finger shooting into the air to wag reprovingly. “Don't feel sorry. I don't deserve it, I really don't.” The hand dropped to her side. “You know what I do deserve, probably?” Her nose scrunched in consideration, knees buckling. “A _nap_.”

Yaz lunged fruitlessly, eyeing the concrete floor with dismay, but surprisingly it was Ryan who dived in time to shove his hands under the Doctor's head before it could impact. His knees collapsed under him and hit the floor with a painful-sounding echo. For a moment, the three of them stopped, just breathing. In sleep, the Doctor's face was smooth and untroubled for the first time in days.

“She destroyed them,” Ryan said finally, voice wavering.

Graham took another step forward and crouched down beside him with effort. One hand on the Doctor's boot, the other on Ryan's shoulder.

“Yeah,” he said.

“She said she'd burned a world to ash.”

“Yeah.”

“They tried to eat her despair and they _choked on it._ ”

“Yeah.”

Ryan shook his head. “She wears mismatched socks and makes stupid jokes and tries to give everybody she likes biscuits.” He took a thready, whispering breath. “I don't – I don't understand. I thought I did but I – I don't.”

“She's our friend.” Yaz didn't move. The air was too still, too grey, too quiet. All the despair leaking into the air had been burnt away, but the smell of it lingered. Metal, at the back of her mouth. “We don't have to understand.”

Graham sighed, looking much older than he usually did. “Come on, then,” he said, patting the Doctor's boot. “We're all knackered. Let's go home.”

 

\---

 

“Still probably only the third most awkward ride home I've ever had,” Ryan mused, hunched over in a chair he'd dragged closer to the sofa. Still smug with satisfaction at their avoidance of the bus, not that it had even been a question. Graham had taken one look at the Doctor on the ground and the cold, wet outdoors and passed Ryan his phone without a word. “Do you think he bought the narcolepsy story, that driver?”

“Absolutely not,” Graham said, joining them with a plate of biscuits that he set gingerly on the ground. He flipped a lamp on gratefully, bathing the sitting room in soft, yellow light. The power had been restored while they were out. The storm had tapered off.

Coincidence, Yaz thought, perched on the end of the sofa. Just like the Doctor had said. Life could be funny like that.

“Sorry, Doc,” Graham said down to her, snoring gently beside Yaz, nestled in blankets. He settled into his armchair with a sigh. He'd dragged it closer too, so they were all clustered in a circle. “Afraid you might have a bit of a reputation now.”

She shifted, frowning. “Reputation?” she asked sleepily, eyes cracking open. “Good one? Bad one?”

“Drunk one.”

Her face scrunched in consideration. “Could be worse,” she concluded. “Did I ever tell you about all the trouble I got into with the Carolingian Franks? Quite the partiers, got myself and Charlemagne banned from Aquitaine for centuries, and he _ruled_ the place. We should try to go back, sometime.”

Her face fell, just slightly, but she ducked her head and sat up before it could settle, blankets pooling on her lap.

“Are you alright?” Ryan asked. “All better?”

“Never better!” She smiled in his direction. “Just needed a nap. Quick reboot.”

“Doctor,” Yaz interrupted, frowning. “That – thing in the TARDIS, it said – ”

“Don't worry about that,” she reassured. “Not to brag, but my brain's quite impressive. Takes more than that to really take a chunk out of it. Promise. Are you all okay?”

“Yeah, 'course. Feelin' better now.”

“We made it out fine, didn't we?” Graham said, smiling gently. He shuddered. “After all that. Impressive, Doc. Didn't know you were gonna do that. Didn't know you _could_ do that.”

 _Did you_? Yaz wanted to ask, but she kept her mouth shut.

“All in a day's work,” the Doctor said, but the cheer slid from her face the moment it manifested. “Not really my – my favourite way of operating.” Only that didn't ring quite true, somehow. “Wish I'd found out more about it. I gave it a chance, didn't I?” she asked, after a beat. Thinly. Plaintively.

Out of the blue, but not if you'd been paying attention.

“Yeah,” Ryan said, frowning. “Of course you did, you always do.”

“And does that – does that make me right?” Her hands balled into fists in her lap. It wasn't the sort of question that could easily be answered, Yaz didn't think, if only because she'd asked it herself, before. The truth was, there was no way of knowing. You could only do what you thought was best, even if it wasn't perfect, even if it was soured by something beyond unselfish giving.

The shadows were gone. No one else was going to die. That had to count for something, even if she couldn't quite figure out how to say it.

“Doesn't it?” Yaz asked, quietly, but it was, as the Doctor had pointed out earlier – not quite the point of it all, somehow.

The Doctor shook her head. “There's always another way. I should've found it. I always find it. Mostly. I mostly always find it. Except when I don't.”

“You beat them, though,” Ryan said. “Him. It?” He shook his head, shadows passing over his face, no longer a threat. “You won.”

The Doctor squeezed her eyes shut. Exhaled a sound that was not quite a laugh. “I've done a terrible job of this, haven't I,” she said softly, more to herself than to either of them. “It's not about winning. Rule number one. It's about doing the right thing. Mostly. Sometimes. The kind thing. The – good thing. I'm not sure – I'm not sure that was the right, good, kind thing.” She stilled. “Or maybe it was. Sort of thought I'd finally got the hang of this. I want to be the sort of person that has finally got the hang of this, but I keep – ” She breathed out, and it was not exactly a sigh. “I'm sorry,” she said, looking so genuinely disgusted with herself that it pulled at Yasmin's heart. “That you had to see that. For the way I've – been.”

“You weren't yourself,” Graham said, passing her a biscuit, which she accepted morosely.

“Yeah,” Ryan chimed in. “You were being slowly eaten by psychic shadow vampires. Don't think any of us would have handled it any better.”

She shook her head, biscuit held loosely in hand. “That's kind of you.”

“It's _true_.”

“That's not it, though.” She tapped the biscuit against her leg, face still twisted. “I think I was myself. I thought I'd – changed. But maybe I haven't.”

Evening had arrived, and in the dim light she still looked drawn, miserable. Uncertain. It didn't suit her, Yaz thought fiercely, heart sinking further when the Doctor's uneaten biscuit was placed gently in her hand. But she wasn't sure how to fix it.

“None of that, Doc,” Graham said, shaking his head, wiping the biscuit crumbs from his trousers as he stood. “No one's that simple, I don't think. Not even you. Can't keep a brave face on the whole time.” He looked down at her kindly. “It ain't healthy.”

“Maybe not.” A small, still smile.

“Come on,” he said. “A good night's sleep is what we all need. Bright eyes for a brand new adventure tomorrow.”

The Doctor's head raised, back straightening. A hint of life. Surprised. _Oh_ , Yaz thought, heart twisting again as she finally realized. As more pieces fell into place. “You... still want to come with me?”

“We're not leaving you,” Yaz said, injecting as much incredulity as she could into her voice, to hide the pressure suddenly behind her eyes. “Of course we're coming.”

“Takes more than that to get rid of us,” Ryan reassured, saying more with what he didn't, as usual. Smiling when she did. A real smile this time. Like the sun coming out. “Besides, you're not half mysterious, Doctor. It's pretty cool.”

“Cool.” She was grinning now. “That's me.”

“The coolest,” Graham said, wincing a bit at the youthful turn of phrase. “But you don't have to hide from us, Doc,” he said, more simply. “Don't have to hide from yourself, either. We already know who you are. The rest's just window dressing.” He smiled.

“Window dressing,” she repeated, almost absently, newly energized, that childlike excitement warring with the exhaustion in her face. “I – think I like that. Ten points, Graham.” She smiled warmly up at the three of them. “Thanks, fam.”

“Nope.”

“Uh-uh.”

“Gang?...Team?”

There was a brief pause.

“Squad?” she tried.

“Oh, no.”

“ _No_.”

“Sofa still alright for you?” Graham interrupted, forehead crinkling, exasperated, and it was somehow comforting. Team TARDIS, back in action. The Doctor nodded solemnly in return.

“Big fan of this sofa,” she said, patting it affectionately. “If it were purple, it'd be perfect.”

“Good,” he said, meeting her gaze as he turned to head upstairs, Ryan at his side. He paused, just for a moment, but Yaz couldn't quite get a read on his face. He was older than they were. He'd seen things they hadn't. Was seeing things, even now, that they weren't. “No more running off,” he said quietly.

“I'll be right here,” she promised. Yaz believed her.

Still, though –

“Want the guest bedroom?” Ryan asked her as he went to follow Graham. Lowlight brought out the exhaustion in his own eyes. The leftover worry, that fear of loss. He had questions, still. So did she. Questions they'd been promised answers to.

But they could wait. It would have been wrong, somehow. To corner the Doctor right now, while she was so – so –

“Yeah,” Yaz said, hands in her pockets, where she'd placed the tragically abandoned biscuit. “Yeah, I'll be up in a mo'.”

He nodded skeptically, pausing – but closed his mouth and left her with another nod of acknowledgement. What kind of acknowledgement, she wasn't entirely sure. _Boys_ , she thought with tired fondness. Bless them.

She sighed. Turned to shut off the lamp and caught the Doctor halfway through Ryan's abandoned Rubik’s cube, halfway between sitting and lying down, like she'd gotten distracted partway through the motion.

“Oi,” she said, turning off the light and plunging them into murky dimness. It helped her make her point. Would probably stop the Doctor distracting herself too, unless she could see in the dark. Which was, admittedly, a possibility. “Good night's sleep, Graham said. You probably need it more than any of us.”

“Yeah, well,” the Doctor protested, poorly. It was too dark now to make out her expression all that well, but it sounded like a cross between the indignant and the sheepish scrunch. “Alright, alright,” she muttered finally at Yaz's pointed silence, and there was the sound of the muffled settling of blankets as she gave in and lay all the way back. A _thunk_ as the Rubik’s cube fell from her grasp to the floor. “Happy?”

“It don't take much.”

“Debatable.”

Yaz smiled. “Goodnight,” she said, into the dimness. She could just make out the Doctor's silhouette now, sprawled on the sofa in a way that looked too deliberate to be truly relaxed.

“Goodnight, Yaz.” There was a pause. The slightest hitch in breath, just enough to stop her from turning. From leaving. “You going up?” The Doctor asked, and there was something – thin and false again, in the brightness of her voice. It was more recognizable now.

 _Fragile_ , she thought.

“Thought I would, yeah.” Yaz stayed where she was, though. Waiting. Thinking. The darkness was like a shield, here. A blanket. Something to hide behind, instead of something to hide from. “You don't like to be alone,” she said quietly, eventually. “Do you, Doctor.”

Only silence. But, then – it hadn't really been a question. And that was all that you got, sometimes, with the Doctor. Silence. Unless you pressed further, tried to work your way past the mask.

“Is that why you never sleep?”

“I don't need to sleep very much,” came the answer, exhausted, just shy of indignant. Another breath of silence in the heaving dark between them. “Don't – like to sleep very much.” Softer.

It would have been just as easy to leave as it would have been to stay. Easier, even. Maybe.

Wasn't like her to take the easy way out, though. Never had been. Never would be. And she had questions, a thousand of them, and it wasn't like her to leave a mystery unsolved, either. She was police for a reason. She crossed the room in a few easy, silent steps, slipping through the murky dark to settle herself on the rug at the head of the sofa. Knees up to her chest, eyes to the barest hint of night through the open curtain. Before she could change her mind.

“I'll just stay here, then,” she said. “'Til you fall asleep.”

The Doctor's voice was a rasp, nearer to her ear than she'd thought. Relieved and guilty in a single breath. “You don't have to do that.”

“Not doing it 'cause I have to,” she replied. “Someone's gotta keep an eye on you. Ryan's right, you know. You're mysterious.”

She could hear the smile in the Doctor's voice. “You're a good one, Yasmin Khan.” A careful breath. A rasp, in the dark. “It's all rubbish, you know.”

The air was so still. “What is?” she asked.

“What Drake was saying. Not – about me, but about humanity. You're not cattle.” Her voice was disgusted, first, and then fragile, incredulous. Spun glass, sharp with wonder. “You're remarkable. Amazing. You don't always choose right, but you choose. You choose who you are. Choose who you become. Every single one of you, every day. It's what makes you human. It's incredible.” She was smiling again. It brightened her vowels. “Worth defending. I look up to you, you know. You, especially, Yasmin Khan.”

“Now you're just flattering,” she said quietly, smiling in turn. Approval burning warm in her chest. It wasn't hard to get from the Doctor, but somehow it still always felt earned, somehow. “You all right now, really?” she asked, curious. Still a bit worried, if she was honest. “Anything still hurt?”

“Nah. And I was fine before, too. Nothing hurts as much as dying,” the Doctor said softly, sounding half-asleep already, and probably that was meant to be reassuring.

Yaz shifted on the ground, leaning further back into the sofa, thinking. Feeling both closer and farther away than she had before. The Doctor was like that, a bit. A paradox. She let you in and held you at arms length at the same time. She didn't want to stop, but she wanted you to stop her. Every truth a lie, every lie a truth. The deeper you got, the more secrets there were. The more mysteries.

It would have been frustrating if it hadn't also been so appealing.

 _More time_ , she thought. _More of the universe. More of you_. It was all worth it. The danger, and the secrets, and the scalding reach of the Doctor's own past, tearing at her heels. All of it, for that.

And it wasn't that none of it mattered, it wasn't that the Doctor was so clearly more than she said, more than she seemed. Underneath that cheerful facade she might have been terrifying, alien, self-righteous, a hypocrite – but she was also what she had claimed right at the start. What she tried to be. A traveler. A scientist. A protector. Someone who tried their best to do the right thing, the decent thing, always. Even at their own expense.

Never cruel, never cowardly. Someone kind. Someone good.

Yaz had a thousand questions. But maybe the most important ones had already been answered.

All but one.

“Doctor,” she said, quietly. “Just one thing. One question.” Graham had opened the curtains earlier, and she could see the faintest hint of the moon, slipping between the clouds. Stars beyond it, far away and closer than she ever could have imagined. She breathed in. “Before you came here. Before you fell from the sky.” One question, she thought. Not what, or why, or where, or who, because it was all of them at once. The only one she needed. “How did you die?”

There was a long pause. Long enough that she stopped expecting a reply.

“Where I stood,” the Doctor said finally, in what was not quite an answer. Her voice was very tired, and for a moment she sounded very old again. “I died where I stood. I think I always do.”

Or maybe it was more answer than she'd expected. A paradox. One thing as well as the other.

She could live with that.

“Thank you,” she whispered, eyes closing against the gentle moonlight. Taking the answer for the admission that it was. Another piece of a puzzle she'd never complete. “Goodnight, Doctor.”

“Goodnight, Yaz.”

Stars, behind her eyes. What a gift.

 _Worth it_ , she thought. _Worth it, for that_.

She had a thousand questions yet. There were mysteries ahead of her, puzzles she'd never solve but would never abandon. She wasn't finished with the Doctor, not by a long shot.

But they were the very best of friends, and so maybe Graham had been right.

She could wait.

Until then, she breathed in camomile and starlight and the quiet dark. Felt the universe within reach of her fingertips and smiled.

“I'm not going anywhere,” she said quietly. “Promise.”

 

\---

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we made it kids!
> 
> So that's that. Hope you liked it? Thank you so much for reading and please do let me know what you thought! I've really enjoyed getting my head into these characters, and I'm not sure I'm ready to be done with them, so you might see me around as we wait impatiently for season 12. If you'd like to catch me on the good ol tungle you can find me at @sunshinedaysforever - I'm a chronic lurker, but I'm happy to answer questions or just yell excitedly with people about stuff.
> 
> Again, thanks so much for reading!
> 
> All the best,
> 
> \- W


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